UPM China keynote stresses sustainability

Haavisto told Chinese label converters they can expect regulations in China, first on food safety and later on package recycling, and the time to prepare is now.

‘A change of culture is necessary and it’s not just a slogan on a website. You need to employ experts, and even a dedicated employee. And there should be no greenwashing – you have to be able to demonstrate how much better you are performing.’

Haavisto said there are now internationally accepted standards for sustainability, including ISO 14001 and sustainable forest certification. ‘But it goes beyond this. A sustainable company knows what happens to its waste – not just that you pay someone to take it away and forget about it. Think about how you will take back matrix waste.’

UPM Raflatac has developed a checklist to help label converters become more sustainable: ‘Thinner substrates are better, with more labels on roll and pallet; you can optimize label size, plan for less roll changes, invest in more modern, wider equipment. Is a label over-engineered or designed for purpose?’

This requires the full value chain to work together, said Haavisto. ‘It is best to start from packaging design and work backwards to the material suppliers.’

Heine Lehti, global sustainability projects manager at UPM Raflatac, explained how the company’s LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) tool Label Life works – ‘it allows us to focus on what is the sustainability hotspot for a particular material or process. This may tell us, for example, that incineration is sometimes a better option than recycling.

Lehti presented the results of a case study carried out with Unilever which showed that the printing and converting process can represent anything from 4-59 percent of the sustainability impact of a label. ‘The main factors printers should pay attention to are: raw materials, the number of printing stations, use of solvents, use of cold vs hot foiling, and use of energy in these different stages. So a printer can contribute and make a difference to overall sustainability– we are all together in this.’

John Li, senior packaging development manager at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Group Asia-Pacific, emphasized the importance of sustainability from a global brand owner perspective.