PET Liners / Label Sticker Backing

PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate. That's the material that makes up the liners, or backing, of wine label stickers. 

 

When wine labels go onto a bottle on the bottling line, the PET liners (also called label release liners) are basically the sticker backing that must then be disposed of. It comes off the bottling line in long, slippery ribbons, which generally get wadded up and (obnoxiously) thrown out.

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This isn't ideal. So in our Zero Waste initiatives, we had to figure out what to do with all this waste...

 

Enter: our partnership with Raflatac. Raflatac is the wine industry's primary manufacturer of self-adhesive paper and film products, and their RafCycle program is collecting these liners to be recycled into automotive/outdoor carpeting. 

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How it works:

1. Collect all your PET label liners. 

   • To do this, the liners MUST be “re-spun” back into a tidy and tight circle, essentially operating the machinery in reverse.​

   • It’s best to cut the webbing half-way through to prevent the spun circle from quickly “funneling” (unravelling or slipping out from the middle, to your dismay). 

   • Collect the liners in tidy, spun-up bundles—without any leftover label bits, contaminating tape or string holding them together—that can be tossed into a box without unraveling.

2. Tightly pack the bundles into a box or a large gaylord box (depending on your winery's production and storage capabilities).

   • For wineries bottling 40+ cases, we can provide gaylords.​

3. Bring bundles to Wine Service Cooperative at:

   • 60 Harlow Lane in Napa

   • 1150 Dowdell Lane in St. Helena

4. Look for the large gaylords labeled PET LINERS. Put your liner bundles here.

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Once the Wine Service Coop has collected the 40,000lbs, we call Raflatac to come collect.

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Outside of the North Bay of Northern California but still want to get started recycling your label liners? You've got options:

• Ship the labels(??)

• Set up your own PET label liner recylcing program in your wine region. If you need tips or advice, drop us a line!