Apr 28 2008
In America, and in most developed countries of the world, we buy and discard lots and lots of packaging. In the United States 10 percent - one of every 10 dollars we spend on purchases - goes toward the packaging that contains the things we buy. When thrown away after serving its storage, shipping, safety, cleanliness, and security functions, packaging waste makes up about half our total waste by volume. Personally, for just plastic packaging alone, we each discard about 60 pounds annually. Fortunately, global specialty materials companies like Rohm and Haas are helping reduce such waste through environmentally advanced developments for product packaging. For example, the adhesives used to laminate and securely bond much of our packaging make it possible to now produce smaller, lighter, more ecologically conscious packaging.
Adhesives are often used today to laminate (join) several layers of packaging films together so the finished package can function better. Once securely bonded, these layers are shaped into convenient, lightweight and highly dependable packages that preserve food quality for long periods, reduce food waste and enable food preparation to be easier and more convenient for serving. Compact pouches, which contain foods like children’s juice drinks or ready-to-microwave rice, are a good example among many where modern packaging is replacing traditional containers like metal cans or paperboard cartons.
Consider drink pouches for a moment. These pouches may not look like an environmental success, but from start to finish when compared to other drink packaging, they most certainly are. Making the pouches consumes far less energy than making cans. When unfilled, they store in a fraction of the space of rigid packaging like boxes, thus reducing energy and materials necessary to build and maintain warehouse space. Companies can ship the same amount of liquid or food in a single truckload of considerably lighter, far more malleable pouches as they can in forty truckloads of beverage cans, saving vast amounts of fuel. When thrown away, these pouches consume far less landfill area than traditional packaging, too.
Environmentally advanced laminating adhesives from companies such as Rohm and Haas not only make environmentally conscious packaging possible, they too can be environmentally advanced when a solventless or water-based adhesive is chosen. Solventless adhesives don’t emit potentially harmful VOCs, cost less to transport and require far less energy to use than other kinds of packaging adhesives. When water-based adhesives are used they avoid solvents altogether, so there are no VOC emissions, no expensive solvent recovery and disposal during manufacture, and low VOCs in finished products. Packaging that employs newer, solventless adhesives is likely to be used more and more in the future. That’s a good thing for us all.