The Carbon Footprint is a measure, in carbon dioxide equivalent units, of how much human activities affect the environment through greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon is present in the atmosphere as CO2, essentially as inorganic carbon. CO2 is a life sustaining gas and needs to be maintained at a certain level to maintain life-sustaining temperature of the planet. However, an uncontrolled and continued increase of the CO2 level in the atmosphere leads - in addition to other greenhouse gases - to climate change and has severe impacts on life on this planet.
By using our ASSET™ approach, we have calculated the Carbon Footprint of our CERAMIS® film types compared to plain base films as well as to other barrier films.
Carbon Footprint of Uncoated and SiOx Coated Plastic Films,
Related to Area of Packaging Material
Data source for PET and oPP films: Plastics Europe, 2005
Data for oPA: represented by PA6 data from Plastics Europe,
2005
Data for SiOx: internal life cycle assessment studies, based on ASSET™ and ISO 14040 (2006)
In comparison to the plain base films, the Carbon Footprint of SiOx coated plastic films is only slightly higher while providing a barrier which is needed for an excellent protection of the packed product.
Furthermore, films with SiOx coating show a lower Carbon Footprint compared to most alternative barrier films.
Laminate Optimisation
When being reverse printed, SiOx coated films simultaneously serve both as printing and barrier layer, due to their transparency. Thus two film layers are already sufficient for the manufacture of a reverse printed barrier laminate with comparable barrier properties to those of conventional triplex structures. In the case of non-transparent barrier films, however, a third layer is required for the reverse printing. Every saved layer improves the sustainability performance.
Global retailers worldwide expect their suppliers to reduce packaging weight. Often this reduction is achieved by reducing the thickness of the sealing layer, which, however, could impact seal integrity. By downgauging the barrier film (i.e. by substituting 12 µm PET-SiOx with 8 µm PET-SiOx) the technical performance of the laminate is hardly affected.
Both the reduction of film layers as well as material downgauging of individual layers lead to a reduction of the Carbon Footprint. We are striving to support our customers in those developments by means of a close co-operation with our R&D team.
Reverse printed SiOx barrier
laminate
(2 layers)
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Reverse printed non-transparent barrier laminate
(3 layers)
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