As brands and consumers demand sustainability from their labels and packaging, suppliers have unveiled a wide range of products and services to help curb climate change. Avery Dennison has launched several new products to promote recycling, in addition to establishing numerous goals to help lower the company’s carbon footprint.

By 2030, Avery Dennison has committed to driving a circular economy, as 100% of its standard label products will contain recycled or renewable content. Avery Dennison has also vowed to reduce its environmental impact in the company’s operations and supply chain by reducing Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 70% from its 2015 baseline. By working with its supply chain to reduce the 2018 baseline Scope 3 GHG emissions by 30%, Avery Dennison envisions being net zero by 2050.

“Sustainability is more important than ever before,” explains Anh Marella, senior marketing director, Strategic Innovation & Sustainability, Avery Dennison Label and Packaging Materials. “Brand commitments on sustainability have accelerated as consumers demand action, and brand focus on sustainability is also driven by investors and the potential for regulation on sustainability disclosure. As a result, converters are also seeing this. Converters are now being asked more frequently to support these requests for sustainability disclosure, data, and transparency on their sustainability practices.

“All of our development work takes place with a central focus on sustainability, which is why so many of our products deliver not only sustainability improvements but also differentiation for converters who are seeking new business opportunities,” she adds. “When developing new products, our teams focus on how we can reduce materials consumption, reduce environmental impact and make sure the raw material components are procured responsibly. We work closely with suppliers and the value chain to find ways to scale the raw material supply chain to enable us to provide more renewable and recycled content into our products.”

According to Marella, the materials in Avery Dennison’s Sustainable ADvantage Portfolio make it easier to improve the environmental impact of packaging without sacrificing performance – and often without paying more. The company has also launched several new products, including its next generation AD CleanFlake technology.

“We are the first label manufacturer to enable rigid plastic recycling across our film portfolio, providing brands and converters solutions that support recycling processes without compromising performance to meet sustainability goals,” states Marella. “Brands no longer have to choose a sustainable label product for their bottles or containers – all of our film materials enable recycling making sustainability the easy choice.     

“We’ve also continued to expand our portfolio of recycled content facestocks,” she adds. “In January, we launched four new facestocks to our Wine and Spirits portfolio containing 30-100% PCW materials.”

Avery Dennison debuted its Direct Thermal Linerless portfolio of products late last year, as well. Eliminating the liner on Direct Thermal blanks allows customers to get up to 50% more labels per roll. This leads to fewer roll changes, speeding operations and improving warehouse utilization. The Avery Dennison blank linerless labeling solutions offer productivity, sustainability, and safety benefits. 

Avery Dennison recently launched a new carbon footprinting tool in collaboration with the Carbon Trust. The Carbon Trust footprinting tool includes the use of verified primary data from Avery Dennison’s operations to more accurately measure the impact of current and future label products.

The Carbon Trust footprinting tool is intended to provide information on the greenhouse gas and water footprint of an expanding array of Avery Dennison’s label and packaging materials products globally including selected faces, liners, and adhesives.

“Sustainability is core to our strategy and our culture,” remarks Marella. “We are committed to using our resources, our deep operational experience, and our most innovative ideas to drive better outcomes for our industries and our world. Last year, we continued to make progress on mitigating our own carbon footprint and in developing solutions that enable our customers worldwide to lower theirs. We continue to make progress against our 2025 sustainability goals.”

Avery Dennison expects data to drastically improve how we recycle and the topic of sustainability. Mechanical processes have the potential to be enhanced with use of analytics, tracking and tracing technologies. These technologies can be leveraged to improve sorting at the recycler, as well as ensuring material gets into the recycling stream in the first place with end users.

“Our ability to combine digital identification and labeling technologies empowers customers to decrease their use of raw materials, reduce waste and ultimately lower their carbon footprint,” notes Marella. “Digital triggers such as RFID provide greater end-to-end visibility in a highly efficient and accurate way. Connected products shine a light on supply chains to reveal information that can help businesses make better supply chain, inventory management and carbon output decisions. We believe there will be greater focus and interest in using digital identification solutions to help reduce waste and lower carbon footprints in the future.”

Of course, the latest initiatives also require education to ensure proper recycling. “There is a strong need for education on the complexity of recycling both within industry and with end consumers,” comments Marella. “One of the challenges we face is the limited supply of recycled content for use as input materials into the products. Until we start to see recycling rates increase, we will not be able to meet the recycled content goals brands have set.”