Page 12 - LONDON EDIT 2008-2009 pj

The paper industry has been blamed for a host of environmental disasters from the destruction of the rainforests to pollution and excessive use of energy (visit www.shrinkpaper.org to read the full charge sheet). Paper reduction strategies have become a popular way for organisations to reduce their carbon footprint – the French Government has a target to reduce paper consumption by 50% by 2012 – and they are even being used by printer companies to sell managed print services (see page 22). The ease with which it is now possible to reduce paper consumption in ofﬁces, from the use of electronic workﬂows to two-sided printing (now a standard feature on almost all ofﬁce printers), had already started to affect demand for paper even before the banking crisis and economic downturn impacted marketing budgets. According to the National Association of Paper Merchants (NAPM), there was a 6.5% reduction in ﬁne and graphic arts paper tonnage between 2004-2007, and a 4.3% year-on-year reduction in the volume of sheets from August 07-August 08.

Faced with declining demand for its products and continued criticism of the paper industry, the NAPM has started a new campaign to counter what it sees as misinformation spread

by environmentalists. Targeting Government organisations and media buyers, the Two Sides campaign will use PR, a website and booklets to put the paper industry’s side of the story. NAPM president Alistair Gough told Sustainable Times that the time had come to ﬁght back against the industry’s critics.

“For many years, the NAPM has watched the industry take negative comments about its impact on the environment. Clearly environmental responsibility has gained more prominence in the last two or three years and in that period the level of misinformation has increased,” he said. “We are instigating the campaign to redress the balance and facilitate a debate on what steps environmentally responsible management should take in the future, in terms of the manufacture, design, use, disposal and recovery of paper.”

The NAPM has already set up a website – www.twosides.info – to dispel six myths relating to the production of paper viz. that making paper destroys

forests; that paper is bad for the environment; that it consumes a vast amount of energy; that paper has a high carbon footprint; that recycled paper is always better for the environment than virgin paper; and that

paper contributes signiﬁcantly to landﬁll. Gough told Sustainable Times that Two Sides was not an attempt to whitewash the paper industry but to redress the balance and highlight the paper industry’s real achievements in environmental responsibility. “It’s easy to make superﬁcial assumptions,” Gough said. “People know that paper comes from trees and that rainforests are being cut down and therefore assume that paper comes from rainforests. But we know that fuel and farming are the main reasons for the loss of rainforest.We aren’t denying that the paper industry has issues regarding its environmental responsibility.We are simply saying let’s redress the balance.”

He points out that the paper industry has the potential to be truly sustainable: paper is a natural, renewable and reusable resource and manufacturers have made, and continue to make, signiﬁcant investments to eliminate harmful chemicals from the production process and to minimise waste and power consumption (see box).

This view is supported by Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the UK Sustainability Development Commission, who is quoted on Two Sides as saying: “There aren’t many industries around that can aspire to becoming genuinely sustainable. The paper industry, however, is one of them: it is inherently sustainable.”

The 100% recycled paper used to be made at the New Thames Mill in Kent using waste paper that was collected from businesses in the South-East and converted to pulp in a neighbouring recycled ﬁbre plant (RCF).

At the end of 2008, M-real moved production of the paper to the Alizay Mill in Northern France. Pulp from the RCF plant in Kent is transported by road to Alizay where the paper is produced; the reels are then transported back to the UK for conversion and packaging into reams.

With the extra transport involved you might think that the paper’s carbon footprint would have increased. In fact, because the integrated pulp and paper mill at Alizay is predominantly powered by renewable biomass, including black licquor, a by-product of the paper-making process, Evolve’s carbon footprint is now 66%

hen it was produced at the gas-powered New Thames Mill. In the medium to long-term, M-real expects total product miles to fall, as Alizay Mill is closer to emerging European markets for recycled paper.