Environmental Report

Developing Environmentally Friendly Products

As a responsible manufacturing enterprise, the LINTEC Group strives to develop products that reduce environmental impact. The group also works to reduce impact on the environment from resource extraction and the procurement of raw materials through production processes to disposal by including life-cycle assessments (LCA) right from the design stage.

  • LCA: A method for comprehensively assessing effects on the environment by calculating items such as the amount of energy and water input, the amount of raw materials used, and the amount of CO2 and hazardous chemical substance emitted throughout a product’s lifecycle.

Guidelines for Environmentally Friendly Products

LINTEC has been developing new environment-friendly products, as defined based on LCA★1 assessments, and developed 40 such products in fiscal 2022. LINTEC has also developed and uses guidelines for “self-declared environment-friendly products” which are in accordance with ISO 14021★2. LINTEC will continue to develop environment-friendly products.

  • ★1LCA: A method for comprehensively assessing effects on the environment by calculating items such as the amount of energy and water input, the amount of raw materials used, and the amount of CO2 and hazardous chemical substance emitted throughout a product’s lifecycle.
  • ★2ISO 14021: An international standard for “Environmental labels and declarations -- Self-declared environmental claims (Type II environmental labeling)” A business operator sets its own standard and may place environmental claims on the labeling of a product which satisfy that standard.
Numbers of Environmentally Friendly Products

Developing Products Using Hot Melt Adhesives That Help Reduce Environmental Impact

Hot melt-type labelstock is characterized by their smaller environmental impact and lower energy consumption because they do not use organic solvents during adhesive processing and do not require a drying process. In fiscal 2022, we launched HVT products as a new series of hot melt adhesive labelstock. HVT is made using plant-derived ingredients, and achieves a biomass content★1 of 25% without losing functionality. It also complies with the Positive List system under the Food Sanitation Act, which only allows for the use of substances whose safety has been certified. It can reduce about 20% more CO2 emissions★2 than solvent-based adhesive labels that show about the same level of performance when used for the same surface base material. The HVT products show strong adhesion to various adherends and are excellent in attachment performance on curved surfaces. They can therefore be used for a broad range of purposes, such as display labels for foods and daily commodities and distribution labels.

  • ★1Biomass content: Percentage of biomass (dry weight) contained in the product
  • ★2Emissions were calculated as of November 2022 based on our own rules using IPCC 2013 GWP 100a of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)’s IDEA Ver. 3.1. The estimated figure may be updated due to revision of the calculation method or data updates.
Can be used for a broad range of purposes, such as various display labels
Can be used for a broad range of purposes, such as various display labels

Mono-material labelstock made of material with the same properties as PET containers

Containers made of various materials, such as PET, PP, and PE, are used all around us, and adhesive labels are attached to indicate their contents. In response to the growing demand for container recycling, on November 30, 2022, we launched the polyester-based mono-material label “MMP50CA BP401 8SK,” which does not lower recycling efficiency even when recycled with PET containers at the same time.
By using the same polyester-based adhesive as PET containers, it is possible to prevent the decrease in recycling efficiency due to the mixing of different materials or colored materials when recycling PET containers.
In addition, by applying a special surface treatment to the surface base material, the ink printed on the label can be peeled off and removed by the alkali cleaning that is performed in the PET bottle cleaning process, thereby contributing to solving the issue of foreign substances that are mixed in, which is a barrier to recycling.
Furthermore, it is made of materials that comply with the Food and Sanitation Act Positive List criteria, and can therefore be used for food-related applications. It has also acquired Biomass Mark certification by the Japan Organics Recycling Association (biomass content: 40%, certification number: 210377), contributing to reduction of CO2 emissions.

  • Biomass content: Percentage of biomass (dry weight) contained in the product
Promoting container recycling
Promoting container recycling