Frost gives labels a facelift

Label industry veteran Calvin Frost is a catalyst for innovation in the sector and in recycling organisations. For 25 years the American has dedicated his working life to ‘nonrecyclables’. His company, Channeled Resources, based in Chicago, finds commercial markets for industrial by-products that are routinely discarded as waste by their producers, mostly to landfill. The group has become recognised as a pioneer and worldwide leader in reprocessed paper, film labelstocks and liners, and in the re-use and recycling of production and post-consumer waste.

A vision to turn by-product into useful applications has created a focus on the less glamorous side of self-adhesive paper labels and spent silicone coated release liners.

“I started the business because I thought I could make money,” he freely admits, “but then got involved with the environment.”

The environmental approach of Channeled Resources in its early days was something ‘completely different’, he tells Converting Today. But the passing years have seen the concept of closed-loop production move from outfield to mainstream on a wave of concern that the planet’s natural resources are being over-used and abused.

Despite the fact that politics and commercial principles, on the face of it, have turned a corner, he finds it is still no easy matter to navigate spent label carrier from collector to re-processor, and back into the market as recycled paper and paper products. The silicone coated release liner makes up 35% of self-adhesive by-product: 25% is polyester film, and the rest is paper.

InEurope, it has been a problem to get the paper industry to take spent liner back to repulp, says Mr Frost. Instead, most has gone to India and into tissue products. So he was pleased to find a European ally in the newly formed Austrian commercial enterprise Cycle4Green (see Environment feature). The project has led to desiliconised pulp (DSP) being used to complement pulp in paper base stock products, or in printing and writing paper grades.

Mr Frost says that the paper industry in Europe has shown ‘great interest’ in using DSP with virgin pulp. But until now there was no independent producer of DSP in Europe. Conversely, the USA has manufacturers eager to make DSP but no papermaker willing to use the pulp as an alternative or to augment virgin pulp.

His frustration undisguised, he goes on: “In the USA paper mills continue to put up roadblocks that prevent ongoing trialling with DSP. While third party repulping exists, mills won’t trial our DSP unless it is FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) compliant and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified as 100% post-consumer. These mills could ask FDA and or FSC for trial exemptions in order to try our DSP. We at Channeled Resources are trying to overcome these roadblocks. We are very challenged by it and continue to put effort into it.”

Meanwhile, potentially valuable raw material is sitting around with nowhere to go.

“In America we have 1,000 tonnes in a warehouse of spent liner, the feedstock for DSP. That’s between 50 and 60 trucks. At this point there will be no more trials until we have a customer.”

The scope for a take-back and recycling scheme is large, he says, and explains: “In Europe we manufacture 400,000 tonnes of base stock for silicone coating by laminators such as Avery Dennison, Raflatac, Herma and Ritrama.

“Eventually, the finished product goes to the end user where the label is applied to a package. It is a very complex, long supply chain. I would estimate we capture just 5% of the spent tonnage, around 20,000 tonnes.”

This begs the question: Where is the balance going? The implied answer is to landfill or incineration.

The point is made by Mr Frost that action speaks louder than words. He says: “The UK has legislated that release liner is packaging waste. It is illegal to landfill packaging waste and yet we can’t get the packaging industry to support liner recycling schemes. What does this say about its commitment to sustainability?”

But things are looking up: “Sara Lee, for example, has a good programme [in the UK]; and L’Oréal and Duracell also generate spent liner, bale it and repulp it in the USA.”

However, Mr Frost is sorry that while many companies are actively involved, most of them, for their own reasons, choose to be reticent on the subject.

Calvin Frost is Chair of the Tag & Label Manufacturers Institute (TLMI) Environmental, Health, and Safety Committee. He sits on self-adhesives industry association Finat’s Technical Committee and is Chair of its Sustainability Committee. He speaks at key events run by the Finat, TLMI and AWA, and Labelexpo. He received the international label industry’s R. Stanton Avery Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.