As a trade bindery in the Printing Industry we package a number of our finished products in shrink film. Shrink film can take hundreds of years to biodegrade.

In our ongoing search for environmentally friendly products, we have found a new biodegradable shrink film.  It is a polyolefin heat shrink film that degrades over a 3 to 5 year period (as compared to a regular shrink film product that can take hundreds of years in the landfill to decompose).

Sourcing this product in North America was a significant challenge.  We had to go global!  The product is used in the U.K. and that’s where we first found it; but it is manufactured in France. We tracked it to the U.S. and found a sales office in Eastern U.S. who was handling it.  We’re from the West Coast of Canada so we needed to locate a distributor closer to us.  We found one in Edmonton, Alberta.

After running some trials (and making some equipment changes), we are extremely pleased with how well the product runs and performs.  It has good sealing and shrinkage properties at low temperatures and can run on both manual and automatic equipment.

The film degrades at the end of its useful life: it fragments and oxidizes through the long term effect of light and heat. It then becomes assimilated by the soil and eventually disappears in the landfill, leaving only water, carbon dioxide and biomass.

Do the right thing: use environmentally friendly packaging materials!

Plastic Coils is, unfortunately, one of the things we can’t recycle today. Plastic coiling is preferred over other binding options such as perfect binding because of its ability to lay flat without much effort and the ability to flip a book 360 degrees without damaging the spine.

A company in the U.S., MyBinding.com, is now carrying a new Eco-line recycled plastic coils. The coils are 100% recycled from scrap coils and are remanufactured in different pitches and sizes. The coils are still made from PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) and only comes in black. Speaking with Jeff McRitchie from mybinding.com, Jeff told me that the coils are made at a plant by collecting odds and loose ends of coils currently, melted, refabricated and sold to dealers for commercial use.

Historically, it was difficult to recycle coils. But a company in Brussels, Solvay SA’s R&D Center, has come up with a process called Vinyloop ® to recycle or upcycle coils. The process is done in 6 steps:

1. Composite waste is collected and brought to their plant in either Ferrara, Italy or Chiba, Japan. The material goes through cleaning (washing), increasing of surface area by cutting, grinding, and milling, and a homogenization step.
2. In a dissolution chamber, a solvent called methyl ethyl ketone dissolves the PVC and its additives. Anything that cannot be dissolved will be removed later.
3. The separation of the insoluble materials are filtered in the next tank.
4. In order to yield pure PVC material, the composite product is stripped of the solvent in a precipitation stage. Precipitation of the dissolved PVC at this stage allows the manufacturer to integrate more additives for other characteristics such as flexibility and strength.
5. The solvent that is evaporated condenses in its original chamber and is ready for another batch of material. This allows the solvent to be re-used 99.9% of the time.
6. The drying stage comes last. The aqueous solution of PVC is dried and the water is filtered to remove impurities. The new PVC is called R-PVC (remanufactured PVC) formed in pellets for ease of use. In the case of plastic coil binding, the pellets are melted and formed into coils.

Unfortunately, these coils are only available from MyBinding.com right now. You can contact Jeff McRitchie at jeff@mybinding.com with any questions or order information.

A lot of people don’t know we have remoistenable glue services here at Pacific Bindery Services. It is a service we added a few years ago to increase our ever-growing list of services we provide to our customers. The “old-fashioned” way of creating mailers is to print a piece, have it folded and include with it a printed envelope. But today, envelope prices are only rising, so a lot of printed pieces are turned into “returnvelopes”. At PBS, we can fold, score, perforate and apply three stripes of remoistenable glue to a piece all in one pass! Below are some technical specifications provided by our very own Larry Worfolk – Customer Service Superstar (Supervisor).

Remoistenable glue is a line of glue which is dry on the finished product and which activates when moisture is applied to seal the product. As it is an inline process on Pacific Bindery’s folding equipment, we have the ability to remoist glue, perforate, apply cold glue, slit and/or fold.

Specifications are subject to change without notice.

* Good adhesion of remoistenable glue on finished products will produce ‘fibre tear’ when the product is pulled open. Make sure important information on the printed piece (check off boxes, signatures, etc.) is positioned away from the glue strip.

There are two main types of remoistenable glue: 1) water soluble cold glue and 2) hot melt extruded glue. The type that Pacific Bindery Services uses is the hot melt extruded glue that offers benefits of running the equipment at faster speeds and does not allow additional moisture to be introduced to the sheet. As well, this glue allows the application of a thinner film of glue, causing less build-up. As the application of the strip is computer-controlled by solenoids, Pacific Bindery has the ability to start and stop the glue line with excellent precision and can also product a ‘stitched’ line of glue if required.

An important note: Hot Melt extruded glue is NOT laser printer compatible.

Remoistenable glue does not adhere properly to printed surfaces. Remoist glue areas need to be free of ink and must be free from varnishes, laminates and/or other coatings. The corresponding area that the strip will adhere to must also be free of ink and coatings.

Storage of finished products must be in a cool and dry environment. If stored in a hot or humid environment, the remoistenable glue may be activated.

We do not recommend offline cutting through a line of remoist glue for three primary reasons:

1. The build-up from the glue causes knife drag, creating different sized cut sheets;
2. Product would have to be cut in extremely small lifts to prevent stock tearing to either side of the glue line;
3. Greater wear on the cutting blade.

Please contact our production department at 604.873.4291 prior to producing the job for remoistenable gluing to determine overs requirement.