When millions of labels are produced, sizeable amounts of label liner are left over from the process. Recently one of our labelling partners, UPM Raflatac has been involved in turning this production waste into profit.
Partnering with Henkel a company that produces beauty care products, UPM Raflatac has succeeded in reaching a zero waste objective at a production facility in Germany. More than 400 tons of siliconized glassine label liner waste was recuperated. It was in turn recycled into new graphic printing paper for books and magazines, saving many thousands of dollars.
Focusing on production waste
Production waste is now seen as a potential profit center instead of material to hand over to municipal recyclers or to be thrown away.
Here at IMS we’ve recently partnered with a company called S3R who specializes in reducing waste management costs. They helped us diagnose our production activities and found several recoverable materials. Here are just 3 examples
- Our raw materials for production come wrapped in LDPE film. LDPE plastic can easily be recycled
- Waste from our gardening label production, which is primarily HDPE, is also recuperated and recycled.
- Our label liners come in large HDPE plastic boxes, which are fully recoverable.
Both our S3R and IMS now make a profit from these activities, which we intend to extend and develop over the next 5 years.
Super profitable production waste
How far can this logic be taken? GM the American motor company, committed to landfill free manufacturing in 2005. Today, thanks to their investments in various recovery programs within their production, the car company is now generating 1 billion dollars a year reusing or recycling scrap production material. These include scrap steel, cardboard boxes, tires and even paint sludge. Initial costs were high to create such programs but their costs are now lowering every year, says GM.
Closed loop waste management is, therefore, good for the environment and good for companies.
Would you like to find out more about using recyclable materials in your production? Contact us. We’d be happy to help.
