Low Surface Energy (LSE) Plastics Most Utilized

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Ferris Bueller, yes that Ferris Bueller, was right. Back in 1986 when that movie was filmed, total global plastic production was around 80 million tons. Today, that total is well over 350 million tons with low surface energy polyolefins making up 55% of that total. Who would’ve ever thought there’d be a day when entire vehicles and boats, or at least large percentages of the parts that go into them, would be made from the same plastic our milk jugs are made of?

But the truth is, this isn’t some futuristic thing, it’s happening today. LSE polyolefins are now the most utilized, labeled & recycled plastics in the world today. And for many years now, manufacturing companies and OEM’s have been utilizing the durable traits of low surface energy (LSE) polyolefin plastics in the manufacture of All Terrain Vehicles (ATV’s), Utility Task Vehicles (UTV’s), Motorcycles, Personal Watercraft, Snow Mobiles, Kayaks, Small Boats and more. Impact, chemical and environmental resistance is key to these types of vehicles that live in every harsh environment imaginable.

Understanding The Meaning Of Permanent Labeling

As great as LSE polyolefin plastics are, they lack one thing that many Industrial Designers and Engineers have seemingly missed. Being able to permanently label these plastics for their life use. But here’s the deal, it’s not their fault.

Doing a quick search for “permanent certified labeling” will provide you with links to suppliers selling permanent pressure sensitive adhesive labels, heat transfers and in mold labels that supposedly solve the Low Surface Energy plastic labeling problems.

Simply buy your branding or safety/warning labels, apply them to your LSE polyolefin durable goods and you’re good to go right? Not exactly!

Many data sheets for adhesives and adhesive based labels provide Performance Data, tests that prove how durable the adhesives or adhesive based labels are. When searching for chemical and environmental performance test data on LSE specific adhesives or labels that are marketed as “permanent”, you’ll find that adhesives and adhesive based labels are always applied to aluminum or stainless-steel panels, not actual LSE polyolefin substrates. Why is this important?

Adhesive Based Labels Fail With LSE Plastics

High surface energy substrates like stainless steel and aluminum attract adhesion while low surface energy polyolefins reject it!

With good initial tack, the issues with labeling LSE polyolefin durable goods won’t be at the point of application when manufacturers and OEM’s are doing final assembly. Failures begin when those durable powersports products undergo environmental & chemical exposures in the real world under real conditions.

The only viable solution is to use a 100% compatible Polyfuze label tailored to permanently meld Brand names, logos, and safety / warning information directly into LSE polyolefin plastics until their end of life use.

Polyfuze Backed By Lifetime Guarantee

How permanent are Polyfuze labels? So permanent that they’re backed by our lifetime guarantee, our pledge to you.

And when end of life comes and it’s time to recycle, there’s no labels to remove that only becomes waste on the ground or landfill because Polyfuze labels are 100% recyclable, just like the LSE polyolefin plastics they’re seamlessly fused to.