Delivering adhesives in road tankers

Zero-waste stores – shops where consumers can buy food and other items in bulk without packaging – are cropping up all over the world. But did you know that many of our adhesive product families for tapes & labels are also delivered “unpacked”? By delivering adhesives in road tankers to our customers, we are able to make significant contributions to sustainability across the entire value chain. To measure this in quantifiable terms, we use the Henkel Sustainability#Master^®, which is a key analysis tool for visualising improvements and optimising our contribution to the “value” and “footprint” dimensions. Using a matrix representation, we can evaluate changes in both of these dimensions and along the value chain.

The waste hierarchy is all about minimising both resource input and waste. But it doesn’t just apply to consumer packaging. Road tankers are not considered to be packaging at all and therefore can be put at the very top of the pyramid – under prevent. By delivering liquid adhesives this way, it minimises resource input and waste by eliminating the need for packaging. Tank containers are reusable, resistant to product wastage, can be repaired and refurbished and – when the time comes – are suitable for recycling.

Delivering adhesives in road tankers to our customers means a host of sustainability advantages. Liquid adhesives supplied in tankers means fewer deliveries are needed – reducing the overall CO2 footprint of our customers’ products. Just-in-time delivery eliminates the need for storage and means less manual handling – and with no drums to dispose of at the end of use, waste is avoided. The bulk supply of liquid hot-melt adhesives also means lower melt costs for our customers, which translates into lower energy use. Overall, this means less manual handling by workers, bringing a significant contribution to health & safety.