PODCAST | The Role of Inks, Coatings & Adhesives in Sustainable Packaging

It’s no secret that consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies and converters are under intense pressure to develop packaging that achieves sustainability. This includes the flexible packaging market, where reducing plastic films has recently become a priority.

Achieving sustainable packaging depends a great deal on the advancement of inks, coatings and adhesives.

In this podcast, Jay Downey, a coatings business development manager for the flexible packaging market at Sun Chemical, and Buddy Graves, a product manager at Sun Chemical, discuss the latest trends and breakthroughs in inks, coatings and adhesives as they relate to sustainable packaging.

The migration toward mono-web packaging as a way to facilitate recyclability has been gaining steam, and this podcast touches on what converters should know as they transition to mono-web.

“A great example of mono-web lamination would be a polyethylene laminated to a polyethylene, or maybe a clear polypropylene laminated to a clear polypropylene,” Downey said. “We try to understand what that material is going to be in regards to mono-web, and then we look at the different types of inks/coatings/adhesives that we have in our portfolio and how do those match up to comply with the recycling guidelines.”

More generally, Downey noted that Sun Chemical is focused not only on packaging but also on the product going inside the packaging.

“We don’t want to address one initiative and then create another issue further down the road with something like food waste” as a result of packaging that doesn’t protect the product properly.

Graves notes that it’s necessary to know which recycle stream is going to be followed in order to employ the proper inks.

“Once we understand what the recycle stream is, we can start to assess whether the inks should be retentive – or designed to stay with the substrate – or washable, meaning the inks can be removed prior to recycling,” Graves explains, adding that “Sun Chemical has a complete portfolio of inks.”

Be sure to check out the entire podcast interview below to get the whole story.