Webinar: ‘Organic or Recyclable Cards? A guide to choosing’

• The term biodegradable designates a material that undergoes biological degradation or complete biodegradation. If a card made of biodegradable material is disposed of in the environment, it degrades and becomes biomass. Its chemical composition dissolves into individual elements, which yield naturally occurring biomass.
• Degradation is the molecular breakdown of a complex chain into a simple material. If we take a material that has a molecular chain composed of xyz, such as PVC, and add a substance that makes the molecule break apart, the material is broken down into its basic elements, which become more digestible by the environment than complex plastics.
• Let’s move on to recycled material. In this case we shall discuss recycled PVC. PVC is one of few materials that can be completely regenerated. Card manufacturers, who produce tonnes of cards per year, create production waste and misprints. We give this material to legally certified companies that accept the material, clean it, separate it and grind it in mechanical mills, turning it into granules. 

These granules are resold to the original manufacturer, which heats it up, passes it through calenders — using material refining processes — and transforms it into electrical cable ducts, electrical cable sheaths, or flat laminates that can be used to enhance kitchens if the material is coloured, e.g. modern chipboard kitchens with PVC laminate on top. It can also be converted into material for reuse in the card world.

BIODEGRADABLE, DEGRADABLE AND RECYCLED MATERIALS

What are biodegradable materials?

• Wood. Wood — and still with regard to cards — Paperboard, paperboard, technical paperboard and complex, so-called bio-based plastics, which are divided into PLA and PHA. Biodegradable materials were introduced into the cards industry in some instances for image-related reasons, or for environmental reasons, as in the case of cardboard.  Especially in the United States and England, where there is a deep awareness of environmental issues, which is thus used for marketing purposes, leading brands were the first to switch from PVC to alternative materials, namely wood and, especially, cardboard.

A material is biodegradable when it is used pure, in its original state.

The cards industry often faces insurmountable production problems when producing cards in pure wood because wood has a porous surface that is not adapted to surface tension and not compatible with certain types of printing and customisation. There might be some difficulty when printing a barcode, PIN, etc., as machines in the card manufacturing industry have been calibrated as per ISO standards to process standard surfaces, which are 99% PVC. Plastic elements are therefore usually added to cards. Hence, we have wood treated with plastics and chemical paints to enable the use of wood on industrial machinery. This must be stated because mixing biodegradable materials with non-biodegradable materials results in a hybrid material which is even more harmful than plastic since it cannot be recycled and can only be disposed of in waste-to-energy plants, so it is destroyed like normal waste.

Discussing ‘biodegradable’ means referring to the pure product, that is, wood. Wood is hard to process, although its positive aspect is that it is highly biodegradable. Indeed, it decomposes in two to three years provided it is not combined with plastics and laminates. The negative aspects concern its low mechanical flexibility — if I bend a wooden card, it breaks — its fairly limited availability, and low compatibility with production machinery. Wooden cards can be equipped for use as loyalty cards, gift cards and RFID cards. We provide these cards both with and without technological features.

• Cardboard. Cardboard is another biodegradable material. Cardboard can be printed very easily using all methods (offset, silkscreen printing, pad printing, etc.), but it has some limitations, such as its relative flexibility (paper is produced and pressed along the grain, so when it flexes in this direction, it crumbles and breaks; indeed, such production requires the creation of a cut-fibre product, that is, a product that is flexible on the more fragile side of the paper), very little or no resistance to abrasion (if I scratch it with my fingernail, the print comes off) and very sensitive to moisture (large quantities of paper become curved and, consequently, unusable, when stored incorrectly). It has a short lifespan. Cardboard has always been used for cards with a short lifespan, such as gift cards, subscriptions with expiry dates and phone top-up cards, which have now disappeared. Another advantage is that with a relatively lower specific weight than plastics, larger quantities can be produced for the same weight, with additional benefits in terms of raw material costs. The degradation process may vary depending on thickness, but cardboard degrades very quickly in the natural environment.

Hence, the positive aspects of cardboard are: total biodegradability, weight/quantity ratio (greater volume for the same weight) and easy availability, (unless we refer to special cardboards produced by some European companies). However, delivery time is rather quick, and printing is very easy. Negative aspects include low mechanical flexibility, low abrasion resistance, brittleness, mechanical variations due to dampness, and limited lifespan of the finished product. We are also able to supply these products, which can be equipped with certain types of technology such as RFID, magnetic stripes and stamping. These cards are suggested for use as gift cards, scratch off top-ups, phone cards or promotional vouchers.

• Finally, we find ultra technological, bio-based cards. These products use starch as a molecular binder. In the case of PLA, this refers mainly to corn because the PLA project originated in America using corn starch, which was also used to produce shopping bags at the time. PLA is totally biodegradable when used in its pure form, but on the market, pure PLA is not used for cards; rather, it is mixed with other substances. It can be created in wafer form, i.e. with a PLA core and PET coating. This creates a hybrid that is a problem for disposal, since it is not recyclable at all. The positive feature of PLA is that it is totally biodegradable when used in its pure form. Its negative points include low availability and low resistance to medium and high temperatures — pure PVC cards turn yellow in 2–4 years; PLA cards have a much shorter lifespan because they tend to degrade. If used pure, it is hard to machine and is very costly. It can also be used for loyalty cards, gift cards and bank cards, but it can never be used pure.

PHA is obtained by fermenting sugars, which are digested and transformed into biomass by bacteria. PHA is also completely biodegradable when used pure, although it presents the same problems as PLA. It too can be used for loyalty, gift and bank cards.

Degradable materials

• Degradable materials are a positive solution consistent with the eco-friendly approach gradually being introduced in industry. ‘Degradable’ is not the same as ‘biodegradable’. Like the original PVC, it is composed of part sea salt (57%) and part ethylene (43%), as well as degradation additives. Imagine a mechanical chain. An appetising substance is inserted between one link and the next, making the microorganisms present in the organic decomposition phases hungry. These microorganisms feed on this appealing substance, digest it and transform it into biomass. In doing so, they break the PVC molecular chain and begin to decompose it, breaking down the molecules and starting to destroy it.

Then there are materials referred to as oxo-degradable. These undergo degradation when exposed to UV light or heat, moisture, etc. This degradation process leads to the creation of so-called microplastics, which are not visible to the naked eye but actually infest the environment. Microplastics are inhaled and eaten by fish. They are not digested at all, and are returned to the environment modified, but still with their polluting structure. This type of degradable PVC is designed not to turn into microplastics. It is absolutely equivalent to standard PVC. It has the same characteristics in terms of productivity, since it can be printed using all known techniques, it is compatible with all ISO standard customisation machines (inkjet, UV, etc.), it can be laminated at low temperatures and it also reduces carbon dioxide emissions. These cards have a mean lifespan of 2–4 years, but they can actually reach up to 10 years, and their elasticity is the same as standard PVC.

Not everyone knows that when PVC is produced as a raw material, its emissions and energy consumption are lower than for other materials. Less energy is used to produce PVC, and there are fewer CO2 emissions in the environment because it can be softened at much lower temperatures than other materials, for instance, polycarbonate and PETG, which require more complex processing at higher temperatures. PVC is therefore more environmentally friendly than other materials, even at the onset.

The positive aspects of degradable PVC are its low cost (in the sense that it maintains its market price), easy availability (its production time is identical to normal PVC) and the same chemical and mechanical properties as PVC. As far as we are concerned, it is perfect for production because it meets all the criteria of ISO standards, has low CO2 emissions, and a long service life. Moreover, it is a fully recyclable material. An added value of the environmentally friendly traits of degradable PVC is that besides being degradable, it can be collected and given to companies that regenerate it. In fact, degradable PVC can be reused up to eight times, so it can become a card again, or even a sewer pipe, an electrical conduit, etc. 

It is, therefore, an environmentally sustainable process. Uses include those of conventional PVC: loyalty cards, gift cards, chip cards, RFID cards and credit cards.

Recycled PVC

• Finally, let’s talk about a material that can also be degradable, precisely PVC. The recycled material has the same characteristics as the initial PVC, that is, it is exactly the same in terms of mechanical properties and printability.

The positive aspects of recycled PVC are its low cost, easy availability, high elasticity and chemical resistance. It is compatible with all printing and customisation techniques, involves a low power consumption and low CO2 emissions during production and is fully recyclable. The truly negative aspect of recycled PVC is that it is slightly less white than virgin PVC. However, this does not hinder certain uses of the cards, since printing covers them with colours. 

The other negative point is a higher colour tolerance because it is a recycled material; therefore, even if it is cleaned and regenerated, it will not have the whiteness of the original PVC. Once again, it covers the complete range of uses, including loyalty cards, gift cards, chip cards, RFID cards and credit cards.

What is the fate of our cards after their use? We have two options for degradable PVC. 

The first is to recycle it up to 8 times by giving it to specialised companies for processing. The second is that the end customer throws the card into the wet waste and, as seen in laboratory studies, degradation takes place in about 30 years, which is a long time, but much less than a standard PVC card or hybrid card, which have theoretical decay times of more than 400 years.

At Partitalia, we supply all the materials described in this article without any problems, enriching them with the added value that comes from technology applied to the cards. Moreover, Partitalia is equipped with a card production system designed to operate with very low carbon dioxide emissions.