The Calvin Frost Sustainability Awards recognize companies making meaningful strides toward a more sustainable future. These awards are presented in three categories, each reflecting a different point on the sustainability journey.

The Elevation Award is reserved for companies that are leading the industry—those with fully formed strategies, measurable results, and innovations that set the bar for environmental and social impact.

This year’s converter winner, Resource Label Group, is a company that prioritizes employee wellness, diversity, equity, and inclusion while weaving sustainability into every aspect of its operations. Through its RLGreen programs, it engages employees, offers eco-friendly APR-approved products, and helps customers reduce their carbon footprints. Its liner recycling programs and commitments to EcoVadis, CDP, and SBTi demonstrate both accountability and leadership. With over 40 educational sessions held for customers and partners, they’re not just advancing their own sustainability goals—they’re lifting the industry.

The 4evergreen alliance is a cross-industry initiative uniting over 100 members representing every fiber-based packaging value chain stage—from forest managers to packaging producers, designers, brand owners, researchers, and recyclers. Their shared objective is to contribute to a climate-neutral society by enhancing the circularity and sustainability of fiber-based packaging. The alliance has set an ambitious goal: to achieve a 90% recycling rate for fiber-based packaging by 2030.

Fiber-Based Packaging in Context

Fiber-based packaging—including paper cups, cartons, and corrugated boxes—currently represents approximately 38% of all packaging on the European market (Material Economics, 2020). As demand for sustainable alternatives grows, the variety and complexity of fiber-based packaging formats continue to increase. While many of these are inherently recyclable, others—particularly those used in household, out-of-home, and on-the-go consumption, present specific challenges for collection, sorting, and recycling.

One example is the paper release liner, which TLMI’s Liner Recycling Initiative is actively focused on. Although liner is made from fiber, the silicone, and other coatings, hinder its compatibility with brown fiber recycling streams (e.g., cardboard and paperboard). These technical barriers highlight the need for improved design, infrastructure, and processing technologies—areas in which 4evergreen is actively investing its expertise.

Driving Innovation and Setting Industry Standards

4evergreen is committed to accelerating the development of new technologies and industry practices to support higher recycling performance. The alliance’s approach is guided by a set of four key targets to be achieved by 2025, serving as critical milestones on the path to reaching 90% recycling by 2030:

1. Adoption of Standardized Protocols
   The fiber-based packaging industry adopts and applies 4evergreen’s Recyclability Evaluation Protocol and Circularity by Design guidelines to improve product recyclability at the design stage.
2. Availability of Separate Collection Streams
   Infrastructure is established to ensure the separate collection of all fiber-based packaging types, focusing on formats currently underperforming in recycling systems, especially those used in convenience and food service applications.
3. Sorting According to EN643 Standard
   All paper intended for recycling is sorted based on the EN643 standard, which classifies paper and board grades to optimize their value and recyclability within the supply chain.
4. 100% Recycling of Collected Packaging
   Every unit of collected fiber-based packaging is processed and recycled, ensuring materials are retained in the value chain and reducing dependency on virgin resources.

Building a Truly Circular Future

The 4evergreen alliance exemplifies the collaborative effort needed to realize a sustainable and circular packaging industry. By aligning stakeholders across sectors, developing practical tools, and tackling the technical and systemic challenges of fiber-based recycling, 4evergreen is laying the foundation for an efficient, scalable circular economy.

As the industry evolves, so too must its infrastructure and practices. By addressing critical issues, such as the incompatibility of certain packaging types like paper release liners with existing recycling streams, 4evergreen ensures that innovation and environmental responsibility go hand in hand.

Through its work, the alliance demonstrates that with collective action and shared responsibility, fiber-based packaging can be a model of circularity—and a cornerstone of a more sustainable future.

Resource Label Group – Changing Company Culture, The Path to Sustainable Success

The Calvin Frost Sustainability Leadership Awards celebrate TLMI members’ innovative efforts to impact the environment and society positively. 2024’s Trailhead, Journey, and Elevation category winners have set new benchmarks for sustainable practices, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps. Today, I’ll blog about Resource Label Group (RLG), the Journey level converter category winner.

RLG believes that you cannot achieve success in sustainability areas without creating a unified company culture and that a strong, healthy culture is more important than even salary. By that, they mean fostering recognition in every direction: employee to employee, top-down, and bottom-up.

The Award judges were very impressed with all that RLG has accomplished, especially their RL Green program. The RLGreen program demonstrates the financial benefits of sustainability initiatives and incentivizes sales managers who contribute to the growth of the RLGreen portfolio. This approach has led to an increase in the number of employees engaged in sustainability topics with RLG’s sustainability champions as well as some impressive statistics.

In the previous 12 months, RLG:

• Reduced water usage by 9%
• Reduced materials sent to landfill by 332 tons
• Increased recycling by 4,564 pounds
• Reduced VOC emissions by 2%
• Reduced electricity usage by 2%
• Improved CDP and EcoVadis scores
• Implemented Science-Based Targets Initiative

RLG believes that measuring performance within an organization is more than just a numerical exercise. It serves as a catalyst for engaging team members across various departments and underscores the commitment to continuous improvement. By establishing a culture that values measurement and feedback, companies can harness the collective intelligence of their workforce to drive meaningful change.

The Calvin Frost Sustainability Leadership Awards celebrate TLMI members’ innovative efforts to impact the environment and society positively. 2024’s Trailhead, Journey, and Elevation category winners have set new benchmarks for sustainable practices, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps. Today, I’ll blog about Henkel,  the Journey level supplier category winner.

Henkel – Balancing product quality, safety, and sustainability while enhancing transparency and collaboration across operations.

Henkel’s “2030+ Sustainability Ambition Framework” illustrates the company’s deep commitment to sustainability, integrating environmental, social, and governance factors into its core business practices.

Four areas of focus for Henkel were:

• Reducing Scope 3 emissions and raw material use: helping customers align with their own sustainability objectives.
• Promoting Circular Economy: implementing efforts to enable recycling and increased recycled content in products and packaging.
• Lifecycle Assessment Support: providing tools and data that help customers assess cradle-to-gate lifecycle impact of products.
• Collaborative Projects: Engaging in partnerships and collaborative projects focused on sustainability, Henkel offers value chain insights and practices that customers can adopt.

In addition, Henkel was able to achieve the following:

• Reduced water consumption by 14%
• Reduced waste sent to landfill by 11%
• Increased recycling by 15%
• Decreased VOC emissions by 23%

By 2030, Henkel aims to triple the value it creates for the environmental footprint of its operations, products, and services compared to 2010, focusing on reducing CO2 emissions, waste, and water usage.

By: Rosalyn Bandy, TLMI VP of Sustainability

In mid-2024, TLMI took a firm stand on improving siliconized paper release liner recycling by creating the Liner Recycling Initiative (LRI), a pilot program to identify and solve obstacles to recycling that material. We partnered with Resource Recycling Systems (RRS), a global consultancy that provides solutions for optimizing recycling processes, reducing waste, and minimizing environmental impact at all points in the supply chain. If you’re familiar with the Carton Council, Paper Cup Alliance, or Polycoated Paper Alliance, you have seen examples of some of RRS’s work.

RRS’s partner in this project is Sustana Solutions, a paper recycling mill that will take white, silicone-coated paper release liner. Sustana Solutions is a diversified paper company with three divisions – Sustana Fiber, Sustana Paper, and Sustana Recycling.

Sustana Fiber has two pulp mills that recycle white grades of paper using a float de-inking process that can remove silicone, ink, and other contaminants from used office paper, cartons, and silicone-coated paper release liner. The mills are in De Pere, Wisconsin, and Levis, Quebec.

Sustana Paper produces various paper products, including various grades of office and printing papers and food-contact foodservice ware.

Sustana Recycling offers recycling logistics, aggregation services, and document shredding services. They operate eight recovery locations that will aggregate silicone-coated paper release liner: three in Canada (Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec) and five in the U.S. (Buffalo, Cincinnati, Boston, Wallingford, CT, and Baltimore). These sites supply the Sustana Levis, QC mill.

Sustana Fiber mixes silicone-coated release liner with other sources of recovered white fiber like office paper and cartons to produce a high-quality, recycled market pulp that can be used as recycled content in white fiber products like office paper, tissue products, and food-grade applications.

TLMI’s LRI pilot program will cover the areas surrounding the two Sustana Fiber mills – Chicagoland and the Northeast. The first objective of the pilot project was to work with Sustana Fiber to develop a bale specification document, which RRS can then use to recruit paper liner generators to start recycling their liner. The bale specification has been completed and is available on the LRI website www.linerrecycling.com. The next objective is to identify liner generators surrounding the mill locations.

Initially, the strategy focused on partnering with large generators due to the assumption that they would facilitate a more straightforward logistics process. The expectation was that these generators could deliver substantial quantities of material, i.e., truckloads, that could be shipped directly to the mill; however, in practice, this approach proved to be more complex than initially anticipated, highlighting the need to reevaluate our strategies.  

RRS’s findings indicated that large and small generators may need a broker or aggregator to efficiently process their materials to meet the mill’s specifications. For example, materials such as liner on cores must undergo grinding and baling processes before being delivered to the mill, adding a layer of complexity to logistics. Consequently, RRS discovered a robust broker network operated by Sustana Recycling and various third parties. This network presents a valuable opportunity to connect all sizes of liner generators to the market as part of a unified pilot framework. By integrating these efforts, we can enhance collaboration, improve material flow, and ultimately increase our chances of success.

In the current landscape of the brown fiber market in the United States, release liner is often viewed as a problematic material. This perception is mainly due to concerns associated with adhesives found on residual labels, which can complicate recycling. Conversely, Finat research shows that some European mills have successfully integrated small percentages of release liner into old, corrugated containers (OCC); however, it is essential to note that this approach has not yet led to widely accepted testing protocols before mill acceptance, raising concerns about quality and reliability assurance. While testing is being conducted in parallel to the LRI, any potential brown fiber mill acceptance will likely fall outside the timeline of our initial LRI project, underscoring the need for continued diligence and proactive measures in this area.

In support of the LRI, TLMI’s Liner Recycling Committee, led by Christina Barajas (Mactac®) and Adam Frey (Wausau Coated Products Inc.), have strategized around this vital initiative by creating four working groups to assist RRS: Mill Outreach, Broker Outreach, Silicone Research and Testing, and Generator Outreach. If you are a TLMI member and are interested in participating in any of these working groups, we welcome your participation. Contact Rosalyn Bandy (rosalyn.bandy@tlmi.com) for more information.

The LRI is designed to assist all current liner recycling work done by the industry by being transparent and providing options to all. As such, there are ways that industry members can support the LRI, whether you are a TLMI member or not. To help with locating generators of the liner, you can work directly with RRS, including a non-disclosure agreement, if desired, to connect any customers that have an interest in recycling their silicone-coated paper release liner. For more information, contact me rosalyn.bandy@tlmi.com.

We invite you to join us in this constructive effort to advance recycling practices. Your support will contribute significantly to the success of our initiative and make a difference in promoting sustainable solutions to your customers. Explore the following sponsorship opportunities available by contacting TLMI’s Dale Coates at dale.coates@tlmi.com:

Options for TLMI Members:

1. Founding Sponsor: Become a Founding Sponsor with an annual contribution of $5,000.
2. Initiative Sponsor: You can further your involvement by joining as an Initiative Sponsor to enhance your current TLMI membership with an added percentage on your dues.

Both options include all the benefits of TLMI membership, recognition as either Founding Sponsor or Initiative Sponsor, liner recycling committee participation if desired, linked logo from LRI website to your website, early access to project results, and a quarterly webinar to review progress.

Options for non-TLMI members:

Non-TLMI Members: Support the LRI directly with an annual contribution of $5,000. Your logo will be included on the LRI website, and you can add a linked project logo to your company website. You will also gain in-person access to the TLMI Annual Meeting and printTHINK at a special LRI rate.