Sustainable Label Success Story: ?A new reycling star is born“

We Love Labels. Discover how changing the product decoration on an iconic brand helped this sustainable success story come to life!

Malibu and Kahlúa are striving to improve the sustainability of their iconic coloured bottles. Billy King, Director of Technical and Sustainable Performance at TAC, explains the challenges they have encountered and overcome on their bottle journey to be 100% recyclable by 2025.

Malibu had a challenge. The iconic brand is, in many ways, synonymous with the colour of its bottle. Yet coloured bottles disrupt the plastic recycling chain. When they fall into a clear plastic recycling stream, the quality and transparency of the recycled plastic are reduced, limiting its use.

“It’s not to say that Malibu and Kahlúa bottles are not technically recyclable,” says Billy. “But there’s simply no market for anyone in the recycling stream to go to the trouble, so coloured plastic (PET) bottles tend to be removed from the normal recycling stream and sent to landfill.”

“We’re on a journey to revise, improve and reduce the plastics we use, driven by Pernod Ricard’s circular making sustainability strategy. That pillar drives the guidelines for all of its brands to follow,” says Billy.

“For Malibu, it has been more of a challenge. A huge part of Malibu’s brand identity is its iconic white bottle. So, we have decided to change to a clear PET bottle but apply PET white sleeve over the top – by working closely with our suppliers to carefully select the correct sleeve material and ink system, we can ensure the finished bottle will be fully recyclable in market.”

CCL Label was up for the challenge. To be in line with the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) Design for recycling guidelines, which have endorsed either sleeves made from a low density polyolefin material or made from PET-C (crystallizable PET) with washable inks, the PET- shrink sleeve material was chosen to decorate the clear PET bottle. ?We developed the sleeve to complete the fully recyclable bottle construction at our sustainable sleeve hub in Sioux Falls and then printed it at our Memphis facility which has the most ideal printing technology for the job“, says Aaron Henneger, Sales Director for CCL Label in the United States.

But other changes had to be made: Along with that Malibu has had to turn to new technology to apply the new sleeves to the plastic bottles. To apply a sleeve to a PET bottle, it needs to go through a steam tunnel at temperatures of around 100 degrees. This isn’t a problem with glass bottles but at such high temperatures, traditional plastic bottles can deform or shrink.

“We’ve introduced heat set technology – the technology a plastic bottle supplier would use if they were supplying a hot-filled product. The manufacturing process used means the plastic can withstand higher temperatures than a normal plastic bottle,” Billy says.

To read more stories, go to our Sustainable Label Love magazine: Sustainable #2 (ccllabel.com)