GERMANY – Global provider of printing inks and coatings for packaging applications and labels, Siegwerk has announced that its packaging ink series UniNATURE has won Packaging Europe’s Sustainability Awards 2022.
The sustainable ink solution with a high Bio-Renewable Content was not only selected as the winner in the category “Renewable Materials”, but also as the “Most Sustainable Innovation” among all 360 entries from across the global packaging value chain.
UniNATURE is Siegwerk’s sustainable water-based ink range for paper and board applications that is formulated with natural components and thus partly replaces fossil carbon with biorenewable carbon, concretely contributing to defossilization in the sense of a circular economy.
The ink incorporates up to 50% renewable carbon content, which is up to nine times more compared to standard water-based inks, and thus provides an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional inks without impacting the recyclability of paper and board packaging while contributing to reducing microplastics in inks.
A combination of natural and conventional resins, from bio-sourced monomers, allows customers to quickly change to UniNATURE as no adjustments to the existing processes, such as speed and color matching, are required.
In addition, the sustainable ink range comes along with excellent ink performance and color strengths offering similar levels of resistance as current water-based technologies.
It offers improved ink stability and lower VOC content while also enabling high printing speeds on both coated and uncoated papers.
All winners of the commercialized innovations & initiatives categories of the Sustainability Awards 2022 were revealed on Sept. 13, 2022, at the Sustainable Packaging Summit, in Lisbon, Portugal.
“It is such an honor to be recognized as a two-time winner at this year’s Sustainability Awards,” said Christopher van Laack, VP of Business Units Paper & Board EMEA and Liquid Food Packaging at Siegwerk.
“Being selected as the winner in the category ‘Renewable Materials’ is already a great success for our UniNATURE series but being awarded the ‘Most Sustainable Innovation’ at the same time is a remarkable triumph for us that shows once again that we are on the right track to significantly drive the development of sustainable packaging.”
The Sustainability Awards is an international competition for sustainability in packaging annually awarded by Packaging Europe magazine.
The mission of the award is to illuminate the most important sustainable innovation across the packaging value chain.
Winners are selected by an independent expert jury representing a cross-section of the international packaging value chain, including leading brand owners and retailers, sustainability organizations, waste management, academia and industry experts.
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