Hot melt adhesives are not a new thing. They’ve been around for over half a century now, becoming increasingly versatile and cost-effective. There is an HMA for practically every application on the market. In recent years, the industry has voiced the need for a new development: compostable hot melt adhesives.

Hot melt adhesives are not going away

In modern industrial applications, few adhesives are so commonly used as hot melt adhesives. Their uses seem endless, due to their wide variety. Hot melt glues can be used for the assembly of your cardboard or corrugated boxes and closing the flaps at the end of your packaging line.

HMA’s are used in the wonderful world of electronic devices, where a myriad of uses has been found for assembly lines as well. Hot glue is used as an insulator or fixation on electronics boards and in molded data cables. Once assembled and packed, their packaging is generally sealed with some type of hot melt adhesive as well.

The woodworking industry uses hot melt adhesives for a number of things. Think of profile-wrapping a decorative layer on cabinet doors, for instance. Those doors are probably made from laminated wooden panels, which were probably laminated using hot melt glue too. And to assemble their furniture, that same shop may use yet another type of hot melt glue.

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Compostable hot melt adhesives

Matrasses, furniture, toys, electronics, etc. Hot melt glues are abundantly in use, all over the world. You might be forgiven for thinking that the adhesive is only a small – admittedly important – part of the completed product or package. But the law of large numbers dictates that a little bit of every product adds up to a huge amount of glue in total. And if that glue is not biodegradable, the entire product won’t be either. Even if the rest of the product was made from biodegradable or recyclable materials.

Traditionally, hot melt adhesives are petroleum based. Keeping the same wonderful properties while developing biodegradable hot melts proved a pretty hard nut to crack, so we kept using the old stuff. Understandably so, but not anymore.

Today we can start closing the circle. We do not only have biodegradable hot melt adhesives, but even compostable hot melt adhesives are available on the market today.

Compostable hot melt adhesives are the future

We know our way around in the business of adhesives. It is important to keep in mind that there is a huge benefit in it for all of us. If you start using compostable hot melt adhesives, along with compostable product materials and packaging, think of how much material we could save from the landfills.

The industrial world is increasingly capable of building and maintaining a circular economy. Use eco-friendly materials and methods in your production facilities and we might make the world a little better, sooner than you think. Let’s continue this journey by reverting to compostable hot melt adhesives!

You must be warming up to compostable hot melt adhesives by now. Click here to find the proper one for your application.