HELSINKI (News release) -- Companies in the self-adhesive label industry have made a commitment to transform the industry towards a circular economy. The goal is to minimise waste and to ensure renewable resources are recycled in a sustainable and efficient way. In 2018 UPM Specialty Papers took the first step towards a circular economy by introducing UPM LinerLoopTM. UPM LinerLoop is a unique concept for recycling release liners; collected release liners are desiliconised and used to produce new release liner base papers.

To boost the collection of used release liners, UPM Specialty Papers has announced a cooperation with Cycle4green who specialises in recycling release liners. Since 2009, Cycle4green has formed a Europe-wide recycling service covering many labelstock manufacturers, label converters and end-users. In this cooperation model Cycle4green collects release liner base papers and transports the material to the paper mill for desiliconising.

"To help achieve zero-waste targets across the value chain, we need industry-level contribution to recovering release liners" says Jaakko Nikkilä, Executive Vice President, UPM Specialty Papers. "To date, efficient collection of used release liners has been the industry's biggest challenge to growing the share of recycled products in the market. We hope that our cooperation with Cycle4green sets an example for others to follow", Nikkilä highlights.

"At Cycle4green our goal is to grow the share of release liners that are recycled. Together with the help of UPM Specialty Papers' unique expertise in turning recycled release liners into new release liner base papers, we can help the industry fully close the loop and meet their sustainability targets" highlights Petri Tani, Managing Director, Cycle4green.