Avery Dennison strategizes to drive sustainable innovation

CEO, chairman and president, Dean Scarborough, said, ‘We are finding that as a company we have the ability to enhance the world we live in, and we’re finding success in driving sustainability at same or lower costs.’

Avery Dennison has been working closely with its suppliers to shift ‘business-as-usual’ and the response has been positive. Continued Scarborough, ‘We want to lead the industry in adopting certified forest paper as a standard, and this shift will happen. For 2014, almost 40 percent of our facestock materials in Europe will be FSC certified at the same cost as traditionally supplied materials. We know that our company can make this business a lot more sustainable and we’re eager to make a huge difference around the world.’

The company worked closely with the Rainforest Alliance to develop a sustainable sourcing policy. Ten years ago the label materials supplier didn’t ask questions about sourcing to the pulp and paper companies. Now, the through proactive communication, its supply chain is realigning to support indigenous communities in building real business based on valuable resources used in the labeling industry.

Scarborough said, ‘Sustainability and innovation is our message here; and the two work very well together. ‘

This is demonstrated in Avery Dennison’s film and adhesive portfolio introduced at Labelexpo today, designed to make PET bottle recycling significantly more effective. With more than two billion PET containers a year failing to enter the recycling stream, finding a way to recycle them without the labels contaminating the valuable resource, it’s imperative for label converters to have new solutions available.

Avery Dennison CleanFlake is a patent-pending adhesive technology that ‘switches off’ when submerged in a recycling bath so the label cleanly separates from the PET flakes. Although these labels adhere firmly to PET bottles or containers during use, they detach readily in a conventional recycling facility and float to the surface of the bath, allowing clean PET flakes to sink to the bottom.

The supplier also recently announced its expanded PET release liner recycling program with the addition of two new collection facilities in Europe. Waste PET liners can now be sold directly to Avery Dennison’s recycling partner Morssinkhof Rymoplast, either at its main plant in Zeewolde, The Netherlands, or at collection facilities in Lichtenvoorde, also in The Netherlands, and Przeczno, Poland.