With sustainable packaging and environmental initiatives gaining steam among all kinds of converters, new environmentally-benign adhesives (EBAs) for pressure-sensitive labels were a topic of growing interest at last month's Labelexpo Americas 2006.

EBAs are adhesives that are “substantially removed during the paper recycling process,” eliminating what papermakers refer to as “stickies,” which gum up papermaking machinery, causing holes and defects in recycled paper. EBAs can be removed down to a level of less than 10 ppm in the paper-pulp stream through a variety of screening and other methods.

The US Postal Service, the Tag & Label Manufacturers Institute (www.tlmi.com), adhesive suppliers and other industry groups have worked quietly over the past decade to develop EBAs and create market demand. In 1994, the USPS began developing EBA stamps, and by 2000 all USPS stamps were being converted with these p-s materials. The EBA Subcommittee of the TLMI was formed in 2005.

Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Council on Recycling (http://dnr.wi.gov) took several actions, which drew labelmakers' attention. Spurred on by the state's large contingent of papermakers and their complaints about “stickies,” the council sent a draft resolution on EBAs to the state legislature. The move is intended to help create a market for EBAs on paper labels by encouraging all users to buy such products, and to enlist preferential state government purchases. So far, the direction is not to mandate their use via legislation.

Industry estimates show that less than 1 percent of all p-s adhesives in use by labelmakers are EBAs, primarily because of converters' concerns and outright ignorance of the subject. Fortunately, research conducted by Grafton, WV-based Dyna-Tech Adhesives (www.dyna-techadhesives.com) shows that EBA cost is similar to regular adhesives, they convert like ordinary PSAs, and perform well for end-users.

For now, the TLMI believes that the initiatives by the Wisconsin Council on Recycling will become a template on the national level for implementing EBA labels. California may be the next state to move toward legislating EBA use in 2007.