Henkel’s bottle using floatable sleeve material by CCL wins AWA Award

Henkel and CCL won the Alexander Watson Associates (AWA) Sleeve Label Award in the “Environmental Contribution” category for sustainable packaging design of Henkel’s Vernel fabric softener bottle.

Henkel’s bottle using CCL’s sleeve material won the AWA Sleeve Label Award.

CCL has developed EcoFloat, a floatable, low-density polyolefin material for shrink sleeves. This material can be separated from PET bottle components during the sink-float separation process at recycling facilities, even with full printed designs, which enables a clean separation of the PET and label material, resulting high-quality PET recyclate.

Abdullah Mahmood Khan, Head of Global R&D Packaging for Fabric Enhancers at Henkel, explained that with the new sleeve material, the already 100% recycled PET made bottle body can be recycled without removing the sleeve.

“We always ensure that the packaging solutions comply with the official design for recycling guidelines of organizations. In this case, Henkel’s new packaging design adheres to the specific EPBP guidelines for PET bottles,” stated Lukas Nachbaur, Key Account Manager for Henkel at CCL.

Henkel is using EcoFloat in about half of its fabric softener product portfolio in Europe. The company also aims to reduce virgin plastics from fossil sources in its products by 50% by increasing the use of recycled plastic to more than 30% and reducing the overall packaging volume.