Spear, Mitsubishi Partner for Environmental Sustainability

Spear has long been at the forefront of environmental leadership in the label industry. Its global corporate program, Spear Earth, encompasses numerous environmental initiatives, the latest of which is a liner recycling process in partnership with Mitsubishi.

Release liner represents approximately 30 percent of Spear’s product. Traditionally, this has been landfilled, a practice that is simply not sustainable in today’s industry. Mitsubishi Polyester Films, one of the largest PET film release producers, has developed a solution. “Reprocess™” is a technology that allows cradle-to-cradle recycling of spent liner into new, quality liner.

Mitsubishi has proven the reliability of the technology by working with Spear to test the quality of Reprocess™ liner in high-speed application lines. This has been a success and Spear is now leading customer collection.

Bill Wells, Sales & Marketing Director, Label, for Mitsubishi Polyester Films Americas comments, “Spear has demonstrated true industry leadership by supporting the commercialization of our Reprocess™ closed-loop product system. The full scale-up of our program requires continued industry support of the collection of spent PET film release liners. It is imperative that we identify the appropriate contacts within the pressure-sensitive user companies, to reach the decision-makers empowered to implement the change to Reprocess™. Our association with Spear has been fruitful and invaluable in assisting our efforts to present sustainable solutions regarding the recycling of spent PET film release liner.”

The goal is for Reprocess™ to eventually become an industry standard. The initial rollout is in the U.S., but the program is set to be rolled out globally upon successful implementation. Mitsubishi plans to increase the percentage of recovered content used in construction from five percent to 25 percent over the next 18 months. Spear will continue to help Mitsubishi drive this forward and set new industry standards.