Quality of the Line Reproduction on Environmentally Friendly Pressure Sensitive Labels Facestock

Abstract

Pressure Sensitive Labels (PSLs) can be found on the wide range of products, from food items and beverages to perfumes and other household products. Given their prevalence, there is a clear initiative to reduce the proportion of synthetic polymer facestock in favor of biodegradable materials. The design of PSL is becoming more and more attractive, so it is necessary to examine the quality of the printed line on biodegradable facestock materials, and to investigate whether an equal amount of applied ink gives a satisfactory result as on synthetic polymers which are commonly used. Yellow ink lines of various widths and orientations were printed on seven different commercially available PSLs, three of which are fiber based with high content of recycled paper and agro-industrial by products. Study showed that the lines printed on environmentally friendly PSLs can compete in quality (width, raggedness, blurriness, contrast, fill and darkness) with those printed on polyethylene.