AWA Release Liner seminar review for the pressure sensitive label market

A silk purse from a sow's ear

The question as to how you can actually make a silk purse out of a sow's ear is one that is familiar to Calvin Frost, CEO of Channeled Resources Group and long-time campaigner for responsible use of valuable materials—including used label release liner. Frost's presentation pulled no punches, and addressed participants directly. "Why don't you force the paper industry to use a percentage of recycled release liner fiber in new release liner?" he asked. There were, he said, 360-400,000 tons of spent paper release liner available for repulping and 20,000 tons of PET/PP spent liner for reprocessing in Europe in 2012. "And how much did we repulp and/or re-melt in Europe in 2012? Under 30,000 tons. That's about 7 percent of available spent liner."