Siegwerk awarded gold ‘Cradle to Cradle’ certification

At the 5th Cradle to Cradle experts’ meeting in Vienna, Siegwerk become the first printing ink manufacturer to be awarded ‘Cradle to Cradle Material Health Certification GOLD’ by the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA).

Its new, low migration UV offset ink range Sicura Litho NutriEco is an innovative UV printing ink system, including overprint gloss varnish.

Siegwerk is therefore the first ink manufacturer to market a low migration UV ink range that is suitable for cosmetics and food applications and complies with the highest international environmental research-related product standards.

As part of the ink development project Siegwerk partnered closely with Werner & Mertz GmbH, a brand owner that is now set to utilise this new, sustainable range of UV offset inks for its printing labels.

Despite its currently limited colour gamut and its suitability for a limited range of substrate, from now on Siegwerk is also making Sicura Litho NutriEco available to all other interested customers.

"We attach maximum importance to product safety and always make any effort to further improve the environmental footprint of our inks while upholding a strong ink performance,” said Dr. Jörg-Peter Langhammer, VP Global HSE + Sustainability at Siegwerk.

"The EPEA’s Gold certification underlines the fact that we are on the right track.

"It is a special honour for us, to actively support Werner & Mertz’s Recyclate Initiative by the development of these certified UV inks and thus fill another gap in the overall development of sustainable labels and packaging in line with the Cradle to Cradle principle.”

According to the EPEA, Cradle to Cradle is a design concept that is inspired by nature and represents innovation, quality and good product design.

In particular, it is about the safe and potentially infinite use of materials and nutrients in cycles.

This means that products are rated or benchmarked in terms of production, use and recycling.

The EPEA also monitors whether there are continuous product optimisation processes in place, which pave the way for improved compatibility between humans and their natural environment.

By awarding the Material Health Gold certification, the independent Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute in San Francisco (USA) is acknowledging compliance with stringently defined ‘Cradle to Cradle Chemical Profiling Methodology’ benchmarking criteria, which is applied to all components and ingredients of the product in question.

Gold certification is also only awarded to those products that contain absolutely no substances listed in the so-called ‘list of banned chemicals’, and which do not pose any carcinogenic, mutagenic or reproduction-toxic (CMR) risks whatsoever.

"We want to use this ‘Cradle to Cradle Certified’ label to provide consumers, the industry peers and regulators with a transparent and

tangible validation of the quality and safety of a product”, explained Albin Kälin, CEO of the EPEA Switzerland.

"The Gold certification awarded to Siegwerk‘s printing inks therefore attests not only to the chemical safety of printed ink layers to humans and the environment, but also the safe recycling of printed product packaging in currently established materials cycles.”

Caption: Cradle to Cradle Expert Talks in Vienna / Austria 16th May 2017. (Left to right:)
Lewis Perkins, President Cradle to Cradle Products Innnovation Institute; Albin Kaelin, CEO, EPEA Switzerland; Dr. Jörg Peter Langhammer, Vice President Global HSE + Sustainability, Siegwerk Druckfarben; Reinhard Schneider, CEO, Werner & Mertz; Immo Sander, Head of packaging development, Werner & Mertz; Dr. Thomas Boucoiran, Senior Project Manager Brand Owner Business, Siegwerk Druckfarben. Image courtesy of Siegwerk Druckfarben AG & Co.