We occasionally get asked if we offer recyclable adhesive tapes. Presently, there is no adhesive tape that is produced where the tape itself is recyclable, however this does not mean that your corrugated packaging with adhesive tape stuck on it is not recyclable. You should send that packaging to recycling bin, for sure.
There is some misunderstanding that if otherwise recyclable packaging material that containing adhesive tape is not recyclable until you manually removed the adhesive tape. Indeed, even tape manufactures are confused on the matter. Nitto Denko initially marketed their 5000NS tape series as recyclable because the adhesive was manually removable from substrates it was bonded to.
Some recycling centers will also ask that “excessive tape” be removed from cardboard, not knowing that recycling mills capabilities at removing tape from the substrates.
Katie Fries, process manager Pulp at it’s recycle plant at International Paper says that people get confused about what could be removed from the recycling of paper. She said that paper recycling mills have a process where they can remove grease and tape from corrugated packaging.
International paper supplies 30% of corrugated packaging and 70% of corrugated gets recycled in the USA. Corrugated packaging, or cardboard boxes, could be recycled about 7 times before the pine fibers in the cardboard become too short and weak for recycling.
While adhesive tape could be removed from paper packaging, the result is waste that goes to landfills or evaporates into the atmosphere, contributing to unhealthy gases. So utilizing a transfer adhesive tape is a greener alternative than a film double sided tapes (transfer tapes are absent the PET film that supports double-sided tapes), if reducing carbon footprint is the goal.