Waste Not, Want Not

You may have noticed that, in the last few issues since the launch of the newly-branded Authentication & Brand News™, there has been something of an emphasis on sustainability.

For companies in our sector (indeed, companies in any sector), sustainability, particularly in the environmental sense, is no longer a ‘nice to have’ – it’s a ‘must have’. Societies now expect and, increasingly, require organisations to reduce their environmental impact, whether this be in CO2 emissions, waste, processes and products that harm the environment and/or resource consumption.

There will be a cost in meeting such obligations but, for our sector, also opportunities. Indeed, it could be said that the environment and its protection is the next frontier for the authentication industry.

And this is not just a case of companies reducing their usage of raw materials, emissions and waste in their operations. It’s more a question of how companies can utilise their expertise to devise solutions that help reduce the footprint of their products in the field, and contribute to the new circular economy. To our mind, there are four aspects to this.

First is the development of products that incorporate eco-friendly materials and/or are designed to be recycled. For example, thinner, lighter labels and less complex packaging that reduce the use of mixed materials. Other examples include biodegradable chips (a project that PragmatIC is working on), Kurz’s work to allow the foil backing material to be recycled back into the product, or moving data solutions that underpin track and trace and online authentication to the cloud.

Second is the use of track and trace technology, already widely used in the authentication industry for supply chain security, to help measure and manage waste and for ethical sourcing. MagVision’s technology MagID (see here), is a great example of this, as are the blockchain solutions being deployed for luxury goods, palm oil and gold bars (see here), and the UK project to assign reusable containers with unique IDs based on low cost chips.

Third, and related to the second aspect, is the use of security features themselves as part of recycling solutions. A good example here is Digimarc’s digital watermarking technology, which is already in widespread use to help prevent counterfeiting of banknotes and other secure documents or to mark assets such as works of art. But digital watermarks are now being used in a European pilot as the identifier underpinning the separation of plastic waste prior to recycling.

Finally, recycling in its broadest sense includes re-use. But this also provides an opportunity for counterfeiters. As noted here, the US is likely to bring in measures to manage e-waste so that it doesn’t end up in countries where it could be recycled into counterfeit products. This points to the way in which the authentication industry can continue to do what it does best – actively ensure that the integrity of products, their components and packaging is retained and that recycling and re-use does not in turn become a counterfeiters’ charter.

The opportunities for the authentication industry presented by the move to a circular economy will be the topic of a special workshop – Waste Not, Want Not – at the forthcoming High Security Printing (HSP) EMEA conference in Tallinn, Estonia from 13-15 June. We hope to see you there.