Positive Packaging: A Look at recycled Paperboard

By Eric Hansen and Dan Moore


More and more organic product manufacturers are making recycled material, such as recycled paperboard, a must-have for their dry goods product packaging. Like the organic ingredients that go into their products, choosing recycled and environmentally friendly materials for the outside of their products is equally important. It reduces their negative impact on the environment and appeals to the sustainable mindset of their employees and consumers. Recycled paperboard is used to package everything from food products to pharmaceuticals and improvements in the quality of recycled paperboard are making packaging constructed partially or entirely from recycled board more popular for frozen items and shelf-stable products such as crackers, chocolates and cereals.

Nature’s Path, maker of organic cereals and snacks, uses 100% recycled paperboard printed with vegetable-based ink for all of its cereal boxes, and its cereals are packaged in “Eco-Pacs,” which save 66% of packaging material. Similarly, Clif Bar, maker of conventional and organic energy bars and jells, uses 100% recycled paperboard cartons for its product caddies. Clif Bar displays the 100% Recycled Paperboard symbol on the caddies and now requires all vendors to be a member or an affiliate member of the Recycled Paperboard Alliance (RPA-100%) in order to do business related to the Clif Bar caddies. The company asserts that along with realizing a substantial cost savings, the biggest benefit of the move is the ability to prove that it is possible to do the right thing for business and the right thing for the environment at the same time and to have positive results, according to the RPA-100% website.

These are just two of the many companies in the organic industry that have made recycled packaging materials a priority in their product manufacturing process.

Turning Waste Into A Resource
Packaging waste accounts for one-third of all commercial garbage, and eats up tons of raw materials every year. At about 35 percent, paper and paperboard products constitute the largest portion of the municipal solid waste stream.

Using recycled paper gives processors, such as Clif Bar and Nature’s Path, a chance to turn that waste into a resource, enabling them to simultaneously remove existing waste from the environment while reducing the amount of new waste they produce. This win-win approach to packaging is causing organic and conventional manufacturers to embrace recycled paper in droves. About 48 percent of all paper and paperboard products in the waste stream were recovered in 2003, nearly two-and-a-half times the percentage recovered in 1960.

The American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA), the national trade association representing the forest, paper, and wood products industry, reported that in 1988, about 25 percent of the raw materials used at U.S. paper mills was recovered paper. In 1999, according to AF&PA, that figure rose to 37 percent. Today, virtually all types of paper products contain recycled paper. According to AF&PA, the brisk rise in paper recovery is attributable to strong demand for U.S. recovered paper and solid gains in domestic consumption.

Facts about Recycled Paperboard
In terms of cost and the environment, paperboard currently manufactured using post-consumer recycled content provides an option that is price competitive, high quality, and impacts the environment significantly less than the paperboard made from virgin fibers.

Coated recycled board (CRB) is made out of 100-percent recovered paper, and usually contains a minimum of 35 percent of post-consumer materials. CRB is utilized in major consumer product industries, such as dry foods, home and personal care products. Other consumer products utilizing 100 percent virgin bleached paperboard, such as a solid bleached sulfate (SBS) paperboard, with significantly higher economic and environmental costs, now have the option of an SBS with recycled content in the inner layer. The post consumer recycled content in these paperboards ranges from 10 to 35 percent. These paperboards have very similar technical specifications to SBS and perform nearly identically in print quality and runnability.

Recycled paperboard is suitable for direct food contact and is currently being used in numerous direct contact applications by leading organic and conventional consumer product companies. It also complies with FDA guidelines for food packaging.

As with many recyclable commodities, however, three challenges face recovered paper processors and manufacturers—contamination, sorting and fiber degradation. Contaminants such as inks, adhesives, food and broken glass affect the quality of recycled paper. Also, papers made from different fibers must be sorted from each other and recycled separately. Office paper cannot be recycled with newspaper and maintain its fiber integrity.

Fiber degradation is also an ongoing challenge in the paper recycling industry. The size and strength of paper fibers decrease when paper is manufactured and are further degraded with each round of recycling.

Paper recyclers are developing new technologies designed to handle, identify, and separate paper grades for recycling. One enhancement technology allows segregation of paper fibers during the recycling process according to fiber length, coarseness, and stiffness through a sequential centrifuging and screening process.

Soy-Based Ink
When processors choose recycled paperboard, they often also want peripheral packaging materials, such as coatings and inks, that have a less harmful impact on the environment.

Soybean (vegetable) oil is mainly recognized as a consumable product for humans, but it is also used as a carrier in the manufacture of printing inks. Soy ink is a form of non-food soy. It is an environmentally friendly, healthy, and safe approach to printing that takes only a small amount of energy to make. In fact, soybeans only use about 0.5 percent of the total energy that is needed to create the ink.

Soy ink is naturally low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are chemical compounds that evaporate and react to sunlight. Using soy inks can reduce the emissions causing air pollution making it a more environmentally friendly choice than traditional inks.To make soy ink, The soybean oil is blended with pigments, resins and waxes. The amount of soybean oil contained in the ink varies depending on the printing application. The pigments used in the manufacture of soybean inks are the same as those used in conventional petroleum based inks.

Many processors don’t realize that soy inks produce vivid colors. The translucency of the soybean oil allows the pigments to reach their full potential resulting in rich, bright colors. Soy inks also demonstrate great rub resistance, which means labels won’t smear, smudge or stain.

At the end of the product lifecycle, soy ink is a helpful component in paper recycling because the soy ink can be removed more easily than regular ink can be taken out of paper during the de-inking process of recycling. This allows the recycled paper to have less damage to its paper fibers and have a brighter appearance. The waste that is left from the soy ink during the de-inking process is not hazardous.

With the unpredictable cost of petroleum, soy ink prices are also competitive with ink manufactured conventionally from a petroleum base. The robust color attained from using soy inks can lower the amount of ink necessary to complete the job thereby further reducing the cost.

Aqueous Press Coatings
Coatings are applied to the printed substrate to protect the surface from exposure to moisture, extreme temperatures, repeated handling, scuffs and scratches. Although coatings can’t protect against long term color fading or outside weather conditions, they will improve the appearance of the printed piece.

There are three major types of coatings: varnish, ultra violet (UV) and aqueous. Varnish is petroleum-based and applied in-line on the press. UV coatings can be applied in-line on a UV press or off line on using a silk screening process. Aqueous coatings, for the most part, are organic solvent-free products applied by an ink unit on the printing press or in a special coating unit.

Aqueous coatings tend to be the most environmentally friendly. Most of the formulations use nonpolluting water as a solvent. Some aqueous coatings may still contain traces of alcohol or other solvents. Currently, it is possible to create a low volatile organic compounds VOC aqueous coating.

Aqueous coatings can be applied over wet ink and will seal the sheet. Drying time is nearly immediate resulting in shortened time for handling in post-press operations. Spray powder, which is applied to the printed sheets on the press to minimize the sheets from sticking together, can be virtually eliminated. The minimal use of spray powder leads to a much cleaner pressroom.

Alcohol-Free Printing
In offset lithography, the dampening system transfers a water-based (fountain) solution to the printing plate as a method to make the non-image areas of the plate ink repellent. For years, the fountain solution contained isopropyl alcohol as a major ingredient. The isopropyl alcohol made the fountain solution “wetter” reducing the surface tension so that it could spread over the non-image area of the plate quickly. The alcohol increases the viscosity of the fountain solution and allows it to evaporate quickly. Unfortunately, isopropyl alcohol is a source for VOCs. It is also flammable and has a high level of toxicity. By eliminating the alcohol as an ingredient, the fountain solution is much more environmentally friendly.

Safety, governmental concerns and environmental pressures have caused printers to convert to alcohol-free printing. This offers improved quality, lower costs, a safer pressroom, and improved color reproduction. Alcohol substitutes have been developed to take the place of the alcohol in the fountain solution making it safer to use.

The flash point of alcohol substitutes is much higher than that of isopropyl alcohol based fountain solution. Pure isopropyl alcohol has a flashpoint of 53F. The flashpoint of alcohol substitutes exceed 100F, with some of the newer fountain solutions having no flash point at all. The low toxicity level of the alcohol substitutes make the fountain solution safer as well. Many of the solvents have not been assigned exposure limits by the U.S. government.

Recycling Our Future
The food industry’s growing demand more environmentally friendly solutions for its packaging, is spurring the printing and packaging industry to respond with more quality product choices that are economically priced while delivering the same level of quality that you’ve come to expect from conventional choices. The printing and packaging industry continues to strive for environmentally safe choices in its product lines, and recycling will continue to be a major focal point along with never ending battle to reduce harmful emissions.

Eric Hansen is the general manager and vice president and Dan Moore is the quality control manager for Americraft Carton, a manufacturer and marketer of printed and un-printed folding cartons and other custom designed paperboard packaging products in Sturgis, MI. The authors can be reached at erich@americraft.com or danm@americraft.com.