Dive Brief:

• The Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers (APR) created a set of recommendations to facilitate the packaging industry’s use of shrink sleeve labels.
• The recommendations are intended to reduce the impact of shrink labels on container recycling. 
• A solution for the label issue has been in the works since June of 2013, when industry officials observed that a substantial number of containers with full wrap shrink sleeve labels were contaminating materials.

Dive Insight:

The APR recommended the following best practices: companies should use inks that don’t stain PET flakes during the wash/rinse cycle; they should use sleeve labels that float in water and separate from PET in a sink/float separation step; and firms should refer to APR documents to determine a label’s impact on PET bottle recycling.

In addition, the use of shrink sleeve labels should leave a minimum of 20% of the PET bottle surface exposed to allow for accurate auto-sorting by color sorters.