Care for your wound and care for the world.

Tough on. Gentle off. Nexcare™ Duo Fabric Bandages are manufactured with pain-free removal and all-day hold using a solvent-less adhesive.

As a company that uses solvent-based materials, 3M manages volatile organic compounds (VOCs) coming from some manufacturing processes. But we are committed to improving air quality everywhere — so we’ve been applying green chemistry principles to make the adhesives on many of our products solvent-free, including medical tapes and bandages.

This is a practice that started well before sustainability became top of mind for consumers. In the late 1960s, our 3M™ Micropore™ Surgical Tape moved to a water-based adhesive. In the early 1980s, 3M™ Transpore™ Surgical Tape did the same. In 2013, Nexcare™ Strong Hold Pain-Free Removal Tape launched as a solvent-free adhesive. And in 2015, we began incorporating a solvent-free adhesive in our Nexcare™ Durable Cloth Tape. These innovations are a part of what has enabled 3M to reduce our absolute VOC emissions by 17.1 percent between 2013 and 2017, and by 99 percent since 1990.

And in just 2021, 3M launched Nexcare™ Duo Fabric Bandages offering all-day hold and pain-free removal. These bandages are manufactured with a solvent-less adhesive that offers better durability and flexibility than our other silicone adhesive bandages. The primary packaging is a recyclable carton, and we have also developed an envelope-style package option. The envelope-style option reduces the package volume/bandage by 86.2% as compared to the carton, so we are “shipping less air.” We have also combined some of our manufacturing locations, reducing the need for transportation and the associated emissions between facilities.

The development of a shortened, more efficient supply chain, utilization of a solvent-less adhesive, and creation of a lower impact packaging option are all the latest efforts by the Nexcare™ Brand team to be good stewards of the environment.