Green Adhesives – stuck for answers?!

Seeking sustainable Adhesives for a greener future

While the world’s growing population and increasing living standards boost the need for adhesives, environmental concerns encourage the development of greener, more sustainable adhesives.

The need for sustainable adhesives has reached a completely new level. Innovative sustainable glue solutions are being developed based on ever-improving technologies. Additionally, more and more industries opt for sustainable adhesive products, which is no surprise as sustainability of adhesives is a hot topic for many of the following reasons:

• Improved health and safety throughout the product’s lifecycle: sustainable adhesives contain little to no solvents. This means that less or no VOC (volatile organic compounds) are released during the application and curing. Neither do the finished product release VOC.

• Decreased environmental impact and carbon footprint: the absence of solvents results in less impact on the environment. This is due to lighter weight, less product needed and VOC emissions reduced to the minimum.

• Rules and regulations towards more sustainable products: sustainability has become a priority in development of new products and systems. Therefore, also governments strive towards the trend by setting rules and regulations for products. For example, the VOC emissions of chemical products have long been strictly controlled in the USA and EU. They also gain more and more importance in other markets such as Asia and South America.

Sustainability of adhesives has many advantages, however, achieving them requires modification of existing products and inventing new innovative technologies. Sustainable adhesives generally belong to one of three groups:

• Solventless adhesives: nowadays many adhesives are made with less solvents by increasing the solid share. However, among other methods, 100% solid adhesives such as hot melt contain no solvents at all. Hot melts are common throughout industries including the automotive sector.

• Waterborne adhesives: waterborne adhesives are developed using water as the carrier substance instead of a solvent. This provides the product with reduced weight as well as eliminating the VOC emissions as well as minimizing the risk for fire during processing. Waterborne adhesives are common for example in the mattress industry, where they replace solvent based systems.

• Biobased adhesives: to call a glue biobased, most of the materials in it must be natural such as starch, vegetable oil, resins, lignins and proteins. These materials guarantee reduced carbon footprint of the products.