The vehicle fleet at HERMA was virtually climate-neutral again for the sixth year in succession in 2016 and therefore makes a significant contribution to environmental protection. This was made possible because of a special recycling programme for discarded siliconized release liner: this amounted to 229 metric tons last year. The recycling avoided around 457 metric tons of CO2 emissions that would have been generated when manufacturing products made from virgin fibres.

By comparison, the more than 75 cars in the family company's fleet only generated CO2 emissions of just under 400 metric tons. “This means that our vehicle use last year was climate-neutral again. And this is despite the fact that we generate relatively little release liner as waste material because it is part of the adhesive material that we produce”, states Dr. Thomas Baumgärtner, HERMA Managing Director and Head of the Self-adhesive Materials Division.

Since 2010 the self-adhesive specialist based in Filderstadt has been supplying discarded release liner from production to the specialist recycling company Cycle4Green (www.cycle4green.eu). With the help of Cycle4Green and the Austrian paper manufacturer Lenzing this is again turned into high-quality label paper or release liner, both of which are reused by HERMA, amongst other things. “We come pretty close to the ‘cradle to cradle principle’, in other words a more or less closed material cycle”, confirms Thomas Baumgärtner. HERMA wants to continue to support Cycle4Green's system in the future and also hopes to encourage as many of its customers as possible to participate in the recycling initiative. It is worth it – for the environment and for the companies that would otherwise have to pay for disposal of the release liner.

Cycle4Green organises the collection of discarded release liners, which companies would otherwise have to pay to dispose of, in a large number of European countries. Lenzing, a pioneer of eco-friendly paper manufacturing, then undertakes the recycling. Cycle4green collects a minimum quantity of 5 metric tons of material from wherever it is generated anywhere in Europe, without costs being incurred. A precondition is that the waste is sorted into different materials. Approximately 360,000 metric tons of siliconised release paper is generated every year throughout Europe, the bulk of which comes from within companies applying labels.