The increased introduction of reusable and refillable systems are being investigated not only in South Africa but around the globe – to fight waste pollution and to shift to a more circular economy for packaging, explains CCL.
Refillable bottle schemes for glass bottles that contain beer or water seem to be the most widespread. These systems all depend on similar success factors to successfully implement reuse systems: policy support and regulatory frameworks; financial incentives and investments; engagement and education; infrastructure and logistics; collaboration and partnerships; innovation and technology; and monitoring and evaluation.
CCL’s iconic ‘WashOff’ label supports reuse
And there is another success factor that is often overlooked: Efficiency on the filling lines when it comes to applying and removing the product decoration – mainly labels – in the process. While labels are crucial for selling the product, providing valuable nutritional and recycling information as a lot of information that is mandated by law, it is also crucial that these are removed as efficiently and clean as possible at the end. After the consumer returns the bottle to the shop or reverse vending machines following consumption, the bottles need to be washed and prepared for refilling. These lines have to move fast to be efficient so the label needs to come off fast and without leaving any residue of the adhesive on the bottle or having the printing inks bleed into the washing water to avoid frequent water changes.
CCL unveiled the “WashOff” label for reusable glass bottles years ago, this label is especially engineered to address all these points:
- The label has a built-in shrink function which gets activated once the bottle hits the hot washing water. It starts to shrink and curl and pulls itself off the bottle, supporting the removal process
- The printing inks are applied to the label using a special printing technology called Inline Coating – which means that the ink is sandwiched between the label material and the adhesive so that it is ‘trapped’ and won’t bleed into the water.
- The label is removed very quickly and efficiently, the ink and the adhesive remain on the label, no contamination of the washing water.
New WashOff labels, lower temperature
As not all reusable and refillable schemes will be in glass bottles due to their weight, new reusable PET bottles are popping up. These are already widely used in Germany for example. The “WashOff” label was modified to fit the washing infrastructure for PET bottles which are washed at a lower temperature to avoid the deformation of the bottles in the washing process.
Because Scandinavian countries also tend to wash their glass bottles at a lower temperature, CCL label reacted to that trend and released a low temperature version of “WashOff” which detaches at a lower washing temperature and therefor also enables savings in energy and CO2 emissions in the end.
There are new innovations in the pipeline to grow the WashOff family as new packaging systems are being explored. A report issued by innovation and project agency serious Business identified seven ‘highly promising’ reuse and refill applications to identify potential barriers and leverage points in a pre-implementation analysis – it stated that refillable home care products were the top pick in Kenya and South Africa. Advisory groups highlight that consumers in these countries prefer refillable home care products.
