SUSTAINABILITY

A Commitment to Shine Responsibly

At ITW ShineMark we share your commitment to minimizing our impact on the environment. We continually strive to find new manufacturing techniques, substrates and internal processes to deliver quality without compromise.

We offer a number of products and services that deliver quality without compromise:

  • EcoShine™: A sustainable transfer process for waste-free holographic boards
  • Cold Foils: For inline foil-stamping
  • Hot Foils: Hot foil stamped papers and paperboards can be biodegradable and can be recycled using conventional techniques.

Facts About Foils and the Environment:

No Heavy Metals

Today’s hot & cold foils do contain metals. Metals are what provide foil stamping the refractive and reflective properties that makes it shine. Generally these metals are in the form of aluminum—not the toxic heavy metals that are of concern to environmentalists and the public.

Recycling

Foil stamping has no bearing on papers ability to be recycled. The metallic foil material is removed from paper in the same process that ink is removed during recycling. Both in research and in practice, the standard floatation de-inking process used by recyclers removes foils stamping even from samples containing extremely high concentrations of foil. Paper that has been previously foil stamped is gladly purchased, de-inked, recycled into pulp and made into new paper by recyclers every day.

Repulping

Foil stamping does not impact the rate of biodegradability of materials that make their way into landfills. This has been proven in controlled studies* that looked at foils on a variety of substrates including uncoated inked paperboard, inked paper board with an oil varnish, and inked paperboard with a water based varnish. In all cases both foil stamped and unstamped test samples biodegraded at an identical rate of time.

* “Repulpability of Foil-Decorated Paper”, various studies, referenced in this article from the FSEA.