Society is weary of all the plastic waste piling up from the heavy packaging demands of our consumer age. On the regulatory side, plastic bag bans, fees, or taxes are increasing and causing users to think twice about plastic packaging. These attitudes serve as an impetus for increased use of a biobased, responsibly sourced, and recyclable material—paper—as an alternative. Fitting in beautifully with this need for bags and other forms of three-dimensional packaging, Cortec’s EcoShield^® Heat Sealable Paper offers a recyclable, versatile option.

EcoShield Heat Sealable Paper is a packaging product coated with a water-based heat sealable adhesive coating, which forms seams when the paper is heated with coated sides together (typical seal strength = 1.2±0.3 lb/in [5.2±1.3 N/25.4 mm] per ASTM F88-99). This sealing feature allows the user to create countless customized packaging configurations:

• Bags
• Sleeves
• Banding
• Tags
• Other creative formats

The coating is non-hazardous and repulpable, and EcoShield Heat Sealable Paper can be disposed and reprocessed through standard recycling procedures. This is a huge advantage over the many single-use plastic bags of all sizes that come in kits or shipping boxes and must be thrown away in the trash once they have been opened. For further customization and branding, the paper can be printed with company names and logos.

There are many ways that EcoShield Heat Sealable Paper can serve as a recyclable alternative to plastic. Possible uses include packaging the following items that often rely on plastic bags:

• Board game pieces
• Craft materials
• Do-it-yourself assembly kit parts
• Nuts, bolts, and other small components
• Bulk items being downsized into smaller units
• Home and garden items
• Office supplies
• Other consumer or industrial goods

The list goes on, even including certain concrete mixing situations or similar applications where the entire package can be tossed into a larger mixture, allowing the paper to disintegrate and release the contents. 

In a day and age where plastic pollution is a growing concern, the call for sustainability and environmental responsibility is sending producers searching for other options. EcoShield Heat Sealable Paper is one of those tools that opens the door to an entire world of creative packaging potential and recyclable alternatives to single-use plastic bags.