TAKEAWAYS
- Kiilto is one of the first companies in Finland to collaborate with UPM Raflatac in RafCycle recycling service. The collaboration started in 2021.
- The RafCycle recycling service is a part of Kiilto’s Promise to the Environment. During the collaboration Kiilto has already recycled around 5 tons of label liner waste.
- Well-planned and executed collaboration between companies enables efficient use of raw materials and waste being recycled instead of incinerated.
Kiilto is a Finnish family-owned company that develops, produces and sells chemical industry solutions in four business areas: construction, industrial adhesives and fireproofing, professional hygiene and consumer goods. With over a 100-year history, Kiilto’s product range has grown to cover multiple and diverse products and end-uses. Despite the diverse product portfolio, all the products have a common denominator: they all have labels attached to them.
One of Kiilto’s Promise to the Environment is to reduce waste every year. This promotes waste recycling, and reducing the carbon footprint by lowering waste amounts and using production side-streams. With RafCycle, Kiilto lowers the amount of waste that goes to incineration or landfill to be recycled instead.
“In Kiilto, the environmental responsibility is built into our processes, and the desire to be the environmental leader in our field of business guides our actions and results. We have a goal to cut our waste amount in half from the year 2018 level. When we heard about the RafCycle recycling service, we were immediately interested. The service is designed to reduce waste that goes to landfill or incineration, and that waste is sent to be recycled instead. This solves an issue which we had with the label liner waste stream,” says Lilli Puntti, the Head of Product Safety and Sustainability in Kiilto.
The benefits of the RafCycle service
RafCycle recycling service is label release liner waste recycling at its simplest. Kiilto collects the label liner waste in their production facilities, after which UPM Raflatac arranges the pickup and takes care of transforming the waste into new paper products.
“After we got the full introduction of the RafCycle service in January 2021, we agreed to test how the service works and fits our processes. It worked and fit well. After the test period we established RafCycle as part of our processes and the service has been working well since,” Puntti says.
For Kiilto, the benefits from the RafCycle service have been twofold. After starting the collaboration, Kiilto has recycled around 5 tons of liner waste which equals to 1,2 tonnes of fossil CO2e emissions avoided when compared to incineration. Kiilto utilizes UPM Raflatac’s label materials, such as Raflacoat RP 51, Transfer Matt RP 51 and PP White RP 37 in their products. The label materials contain the release liner which becomes liner waste when the label is applied to the product.
Another big benefit is the example the service gives.
“For us in Kiilto, it is important that we can develop different kinds of sustainable solutions with different partners. Well-functioning sustainability program needs different kinds of actions and initiatives for different kinds of material streams. RafCycle is one example of these actions, and we want to encourage other companies to join the RafCycle service as well,” Puntti says.
Collaboration between companies is the key
Juha Virmavirta, Director of the RafCycle service at UPM Raflatac, has been working with RafCycle since 2016. The service has been growing constantly over the years and today it has over 400 service partners in Europe from multiple end-uses, from food and beverage to industrial chemicals and almost anything in between. Still, Kiilto is one of the first Finnish companies to partner with RafCycle.
“The RafCycle service has been growing steadily over the years, and it is great to finally have a well-known and forward-looking Finnish company like Kiilto as a partner. We constantly seek more partners from different industries and countries to join the service. This way we can avoid a lot of unnecessary CO2 emission, while at the same time spread the word that through well-planned and executed collaboration between companies, circular economy will become a reality,” Virmavirta says.