tesa® Twinlock: a sustainable solution for flexographic printing
Sustainability
It’s no secret that consumers want sustainable packaging.
In 2018, the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business showed sustainable products making up 50% of new product growth. Experts predict that number will only grow in the years ahead. When something is that important to consumers, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies take notice.
Today, CPG companies are looking to improve their sustainability profile – with waste reduction becoming increasingly important. What’s that got to do with tesa® Twinlock, our reusable adhesive? We’re happy to tell you!
While we may or may not be convincingly able to cut the printing industry’s entire carbon footprint, our reusable adhesive solution can reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.
How is tesa® Twinlock a sustainable solution?
It’s simple. By cutting out tape, you’re cutting out a significant source of waste for many packaging printers.
tesa® Twinlock – our newest plate mounting technology – is a self-adhesive, reusable, and compressible sleeve. The traditional way of doing things involves a sleeve/cylinder + tape + plate approach, where press operators replace the tape on every run. That approach sends tons of plate mounting tape (and packing boxes) to the landfill every year.
With tesa® Twinlock, press operators can use the same sleeve over and over again… eliminating the tape piling up in landfills.
Let’s look at the numbers.
Say you’re a wide-web printer with one press. Depending on the jobs you run, repeat sizes, and actual press width, you could average around 545 rolls of tape per year. The average weight of a tesa 18-inch roll of stickyback is approximately 10 pounds per roll — not including the box.
Want to guess how much waste that generates? Up to 5,450 pounds of waste per press per year.
Make the switch to tesa® Twinlock, and that's up to 5,450 pounds of tape not going to the landfill.
If you’re a larger printer with multiple presses, multiply that times two or three presses. Then multiply by your number of locations. The savings add up FAST!
Ten presses would average up to 54,500 pounds of landfill waste per year! Ten presses with tesa® Twinlock? Again, that’s potentially thousands of pounds of tape not going to the landfill. In this case, up to 54,500 pounds.
Reusability = Sustainability
The reusability of tesa® Twinlock makes it one of the most sustainable solutions for the printing industry. This means it has the potential to reduce waste headed to landfills significantly. While it may not completely shrink the printing industry’s waste, it sure gets it moving in the right direction.
Interested in learning more about whether our reusable, sustainable solution is right for your press operation? Reach out to our team.