National standards and environmental regulations for water-based adhesives

The national standards and environmental regulations for water-based adhesives have formed a complete system with mandatory national standards as the core, recommended standards as the support, and environmental certification as the guidance, comprehensively covering health and safety, volatile organic compound control, and green manufacturing requirements.

Mandatory national standards

GB 4806.15-2024 "National Food Safety Standard - Adhesives for Food Contact Materials and Products" was officially implemented on February 8, 2025, and is the first mandatory standard for adhesives used in food contact in China. This standard clearly distinguishes between two types of adhesives: those used in direct contact with food and those used in indirect contact with food. It sets limits on key indicators such as total migration (≤ 10 mg/dm ²), aromatic primary amines (not detectable, detection limit 0.01 mg/kg), and heavy metals (lead ≤ 1 mg/kg) to ensure the safety of application scenarios such as food packaging, dairy bottle caps, and beverage labels.

GB 33372-2020 "Limits for Volatile Organic Compounds in Adhesives" has been implemented since December 1, 2020, and is the cornerstone of the industry's environmental transformation. This standard sets the VOC limit for water-based adhesives to ≤ 50 g/L, which is much stricter than solvent based products, and requires product packaging to indicate the VOC content and dispersion medium type, promoting enterprises to fully switch to water-based.

Recommended national standards and industry standards

GB/T 30779-2014 "Water based Polyurethane Adhesives for Shoes" specifies core performance indicators such as bonding strength, hydrolysis resistance, and non-volatile content, and is an authoritative basis for the application of water-based adhesives in the footwear industry.

HG/T 5054-2016 "Water based acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesive for adhesive products" specifies testing methods for initial adhesion, holding adhesion, 180 ° peel strength, etc., supporting high-precision applications such as electronic tags, medical tapes, packaging seals, etc.

GB/T 39295-2020 "Determination of Contact Adhesion of Water based Adhesives" standardizes the evaluation method for contact adhesion, fills the gap in industry testing standards, and improves product consistency and comparability.

Environmental standards and certification system

China Environmental Labeling Product Certification ("Ten Rings" Certification) is the core endorsement of a company's green image. According to the HJ 2541-2016 certification rules, water-based adhesives need to pass type and factory inspections to ensure that they are free of formaldehyde, benzene derivatives, low SVOC, and comply with harmful substance limit requirements such as GB 18583-2008. The outer packaging of certified products must bear the "Ten Rings" logo, which allows consumers to identify environmentally friendly products.

The evaluation system for green building materials is based on T/CPCIF 0001-2017 "Green Design Product Evaluation Specification for Waterborne Building Coatings". Although it does not directly cover all adhesives, its strict control over VOC emissions (≤ 1.0 mg/m ³), free formaldehyde (≤ 20 mg/kg), heavy metals and other indicators has become a general guideline for green procurement of water-based adhesives in the construction field.

Strengthening local supervision: Shandong Province and Linyi City conducted supervision and spot checks on free formaldehyde, benzene, toluene+xylene, and total VOC of water-based adhesives in accordance with GB 18583-2008, and implemented the policy of "exempting end of pipe treatment facilities" for enterprises with VOC content standards to encourage source emission reduction.