CCL Label, the world’s largest converter of pressure sensitive and extruded film materials for decorative, functional and information labels, today announces that another milestone has been reached in providing a sustainable sleeve solution for plastic packaging: the endorsement of the innovative EcoFloat material by the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR). The recognition is granted to companies that have developed new products and technologies that are compatible with current recycling infrastructure.
CCL developed EcoFloat – a floatable polyolefin shrink film with high shrinkage – to meet the new market demands and to help Brand Owners reach their sustainability and recycling targets to which they have committed themselves. This hybrid polyolefin film facilitates easy separation of labels from PET bottles and other types of plastic containers in the recycling process to enable bottle-to-bottle circularity, an important goal for global beverage, food and home&personal care brandowners.
“We see EcoFloat as the sustainable decoration solution of the future – for a whole range of packaging in the beverage, dairy, home care and other industries”, says Guenther Birkner, President of Innovia and CCL’s Food & Beverage business. “So we are proud that this has been verified by receiving the recognition of APR with one of the world’s most widely accepted and comprehensive testing protocols that ensures new packaging products and innovations meet recycling guidelines and do not contaminate the recycling stream.”
CCL Label released its innovative EcoFloat shrink-sleeves last year. It has been engineered to perform ideally in the sink/float separation process of PET recycling plants for PET containers. This enables smooth bottle-to-bottle recycling to achieve high yields of high quality PET flakes. EcoFloat has been endorsed by the European PET Bottle Platform EPBP in their evaluation last year. As EcoFloat is a polyolefin film, the material also is an ideal match for HDPE bottles and PP cups as certified by Recycling organization Interseroh with their “Made for Recycling” label.
“Our investment is part of our commitment to boost plastic recycling and take steps towards a circular economy as stated when we signed the Global Commitment of the New Plastics Economy led by the Ellen MacArthur foundation last year. In future we expect more regulations to set a target for the recycling rate in municipal waste, for example. Reaching these will not be feasible without investing in new technologies for packaging materials that support ‘Design for Recycling’. As a floatable, low density polyolefin film, EcoFloat fulfills the requirements for sleeves as defined in packaging design guidelines,” adds Birkner.
