What does sustainability mean? Not all of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals or the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) criteria can be fulfilled to the same extent. This leads to uncertainty and in some instances to contradictory assertions. Baumer General Manager Percy Dengler and Business Development Head Thomas Walther shed some light on the issue.
How is Baumer addressing the subject of sustainability?
Percy Dengler: We ask ourselves: How do we define “sustainability”? What impact does gluing have on sustainability? Gluing is a core step of packaging, but it’s just one link in the value chain. Working in partnership is the only way to establish the basic conditions for real sustainability. And that goes for packaging production, too. We closely coordinate research with industry partners and customers. There’s no question about it: Sustainable gluing is the future.
Who do you collaborate with?
Thomas Walther: The Europe-wide 4evergreen initiative, for example, aims to ensure fibre-based packaging makes a greater contribution to a circular economy. Other members of 4evergreen include Nestlé, Danone, Procter & Gamble, Westrock and AR Packaging. This alliance brings together organisations along the entire value chain.
What are the most important aspects of your approach?
Percy: Changing the course of industrial gluing starts with developing bio-based adhesives, developing a functioning circular economy, and further optimising and/or minimising glue consumption. Beyond that, we want to give our customers even more targeted support, helping them achieve maximum energy efficiency and avoid waste. Our aim is to scrutinise the entire value chain and question our own actions time and again.
What are bio-based adhesives?
Thomas: Today’s adhesives generally contain additives made of non-renewable fossil materials. One example is polymers, made
rom petroleum. The packaging sector must resolve the conflict between population growth and resource scarcity and to significantly improve its environmental footprint. Bio-based adhesives made from renewable raw materials can help, such as starch-based raw materials, natural resins, natural rubber and natural latex. From Baumer’s point of view, however, it would be better to focus at least to some extent on biomass, meaning waste products from other processes.
What determines whether a type of biomass is suitable for industrial adhesives?
Thomas: Adhesives made from biomass have to display the same application properties as conventional adhesives, so they don’t adversely affect packaging production by causing reduced output or higher reject rates, and thus more waste. Researchers have to include the application properties in their analysis of bio-based adhesives from the outset. Baumer does use starch-based adhesives in selected industrial segments, but they are not yet suitable for the high-speed machines used in packaging production.
Doesn’t starch come under the category of food?
Thomas: Yes, so we have to weigh conflicting goals. Rising demand for starch could force up the price of specific food products. Rising demand for natural rubber could lead to clearing of the rainforest. The cost of harvesting and transport, and CO2 emissions, would have to be taken into account. Social issues are another part of the analysis. Does a plantation benefit the local population or just a few large landowners?
Why is Baumer working so intensively on sustainable adhesives?
Percy: Our extensive knowhow is used to develop sustainable adhesives, and we in turn use the expertise of adhesive manufacturers to develop our gluing solutions. We adapt our equipment wherever necessary to achieve the necessary levels of productivity, quality, reliability, flexibility and cost-efficiency. The entire process must be geared towards sustainability if it is to earn the label “green gluing”.
What is your opinion of regulatory measures such as the EU’s Plastics Strategy, in line with the “polluter pays” principle?
Percy: Baumer welcomes such measures because they promote innovation. For example, in a very short time, we have received a surprising number of inquiries for machines capable of applying glue to produce paper-based straws and cups, which increasingly are replacing their plastic counterparts.
How cost-effective is biomass?
Percy: Petroleum-based raw materials are subject to price fluctuations, which would be largely eliminated in the case of sustainable adhesives. That is another advantage of bio-based adhesives.
Thomas: Some manufacturers advertise their bio-adhesives as being compostable, but our goal is to establish a functioning circular economy in which packaging materials are automatically recycled.
The easier it is to recycle packaging, the less it costs to recycle it. Put another way, good recyclability improves the cost-efficiency of the packaging.
Baumer is a founding member of the European-wide 4evergreen initiative, which aims to ensure that fibre-based packaging makes a greater contribution to a circular, sustainable economy, while minimising impacts on the climate and environment.
As one part of its comprehensive approach to sustainability, Baumer is working with its industry partners to at least partially replace nonrenewable raw materials in adhesive manufacturing with sustainable, biobased raw materials and to promote packaging recycling.
Evaluation of these raw materials is based on the economic, social and ecological criteria defined in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
One of the primary goals of the Baumer sustainability strategy is to minimise resource consumption.
With the company’s GlueCalc app, packaging manufacturers and end-of-line solution providers can enter just a few parameters to quickly and easily calculate on an order-by-order basis how much they can reduce glue consumption and CO2 emissions by switching from line to dot application. In practice, users achieve reductions of 50% and more.