Siegwerk awarded Cradle to Cradle Material Health Certification Gold

According to the EPEA, Cradle to Cradle is a design concept that is ‘inspired by nature and represents innovation, quality and good product design’. In particular, it is about the safe and potentially infinite use of materials and nutrients in cycles. This means that products are rated or benchmarked in terms of production, use and recycling. EPEA also monitors whether there are continuous product optimization processes in place, which pave the way for improved compatibility between humans and their natural environment.

By awarding Material Health gold certification, the independent Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute in San Francisco is acknowledging compliance with stringently defined Cradle to Cradle Chemical Profiling Methodology benchmarking criteria, which are applied to all components and ingredients of the product in question. Gold certification is also only awarded to those products, which contain absolutely no substances listed in the so-called list of banned chemicals, and which do not pose any carcinogenic, mutagenic or reproduction-toxic (CMR) risks whatsoever.

The award of gold status for its low migration UV printing ink system, including overprint gloss varnish, makes Siegwerk the, ‘first ink manufacturer to market a low migration UV ink range that is suitable for cosmetics and food applications and complies with the highest international environmental research-related product standards,’ the ink manufacturer said in a statement detailing the award.

As part of the ink development project, Siegwerk partnered with Werner & Mertz, a brand owner that is set to utilize this new, sustainable range of UV offset inks for its printed labels. Despite its currently limited color gamut and its suitability for a limited range of substrate, from now on, Siegwerk is also making Sicura Litho NutriEco available to all other interested customers.

Dr Jörg-Peter Langhammer, vice president, global HSE and sustainability at Siegwerk, said: ‘We attach maximum importance to product safety and always make any effort to further improve the environmental footprint of our inks while upholding a strong ink performance. The EPEA’s gold certification underlines the fact that we are on the right track here.

‘It is a special honor for us, to actively support Werner & Mertz’s Recyclate Initiative by the development of these certified UV inks and thus fill another gap in the overall development of sustainable labels and packaging in line with the Cradle to Cradle principle.’

Albin Kälin, CEO of EPEA Switzerland, explained: ‘We want to use this Cradle to Cradle Certified label to provide consumers, the industry peers and regulators with a transparent and tangible validation of the quality and safety of a product. The gold certification awarded to Siegwerk’s printing inks therefore attests not only the chemical safety of printed ink layers to humans and environment, but also safe recycling of printed product packaging in currently established materials cycles.’