Many e-commerce companies, distributors, packaging enterprises, moving and logistic ones are using plastic tapes for closing their carton boxes. Boxes cardboard and plastic of the tape are two different materials with big properties differences between them.
The cardboard is a material with variable characteristics of weight, thickness, density and caliper, made up of several layers of paper - virgin fibre, or more often-overlapped. For its production, the cellulose pulp is the base with longest fibers which gives a special ressistance.
Filmic tapes are produced with plastic film, acrilic emulsions or elastomer base, using different chemical components as adhesives.
Both materials are not incompatible, we all have used many times plastic tapes to close paper and paperboard and we have observed that it is very easy to tear off the tape, especially from the cardboard packaging. Both combined materials do not seem the most suitable as a safety seal.
However, sealing the cardboard boxes with water activated / kraft gummed tapes, we are using homogeneous materials which react to humidity and vegetable adhesive through capillary action merging: packing is not only sealed, but completely unified (monopackaging). The gummed paper tape guarantee the integral closure of packing, it's impossible to open or manipulate it without detection.
Moreover, at the end of its using period, gummed tape and cardboard box, both made from the same material, are not necessary to being separate. Packaging will be much easier in being recycled and returned to the value chain.
