The Hague, The Netherlands - Following the recently announced intensified collaboration, the leaders the world's label industry associations (*) held their second summit at the FINAT Technical Seminar in Barcelona early this month. As a result of this meeting they unite in endorsing the industry's commitment to a more sustainable and environmentally responsible future. They also wish to support the ongoing industry measures to further reduce the environmental impact of labels, encourage more sustainable label materials and production processes. In addition they wish to help meet changing industry and customer recycling targets, and to work towards the continued reduction of label waste.

Among the many measures that global label industry associations, suppliers and converters are already targeting are:

- The promotion and encouragement of the use of environmental management and audit systems (ISO 14001, EMAS, LIFE) in the label industry

- Enhancing measures to inform, educate and support label producers in meeting current and future label environmental and sustainability targets

- Supporting the use of materials and schemes that encourage sustainable and renewable resources, such as FSC, PEFC or SFI

- Continued industry development of solutions to maximize cost-effective recovery and recycling of self-adhesive label stock waste

- Highlighting the development and use of thinner, lighter label materials

- Working towards further reduction in the amount of landfill waste and higher recovery and recycling rates

- Having a more prominent industry voice and input into global government, brand owner, packaging and related organizations that are currently impacting on environment and sustainability issues relating to labels and label usage.

"The label industry plays a major global role in the labelling of products as diverse as drugs, cosmetics and toiletries, food, beverages, all kinds of industrial and electronic goods, and in shipping and distribution," said Andrea Vimercati, President of FINAT, the European label association. "It is therefore essential for members of the world's label associations and the industry to play a prominent position in developing and implementing the best environmental and sustainability practices for their customers and for the consumer," Vimercati concluded.

The members of the eight label associations currently endorsing these measures represent label production and usage in Australia, Brazil, China, Europe, India, Japan, New Zealand and North America and between them are believed to represent some 70% of the annual global production of self-adhesive labels.