UPM Raflatac’s RafCycle partners Helf Etiketten and Bel Leerdammer won the 2015 FINAT Recycling Awards for recycling self-adhesive label liners. Austrian label printer Helf Etiketten and Dutch end-user Bel Leerdammer, manufacturer of Leerdammer cheese, received the awards on June 11 at the ceremony of the European Label Forum (ELF) in Amsterdam. The annual FINAT ELF is formerly known as the FINAT Congress.

FINAT’s three criteria for the award were the volume and traceability of recycled liner, active involvement in the promotion of release liner recycling, and innovative approaches to recycling. The RafCycle solutions implemented by the winning partners scored high on all criteria. Both partners now recycle 100% of their paper release liners. The release liner recycled from Helf Etiketten and Bel Leerdammer amounted to an equivalent CO2 emission reduction of total 56 tons versus landfilling.

Jan De Kruijf, operations planner at Bel Leerdammer in the Netherlands, describes the RafCycle program as, “a clear win-win for everyone – helping us recycle our waste, enabling resources to be used again, decreasing waste costs and reducing our carbon footprint.”

Christian Coreth, managing director at Helf Etiketten, explains that “UPM Raflatac supplies the latest PEFC-certified label stock featuring a thinner, next-generation liner, which with solutions like RafCycle helps us and our customers become more sustainable. To give a concrete example, the release papers we recycled through RafCycle last year resulted in a significant CO2 emission reduction, equal to driving a car 79,000 kilometers.”

What happens at the end of the label lifecycle is significant in terms of overall environmental footprint of a product. UPM Raflatac’s RafCycle program is a comprehensive solution for giving a second life to spent release liners and label waste. Both converters and end users of UPM Raflatac label materials can become a RafCycle partner and recycle their label waste to make their operations more sustainable.