Manufacturing Byproducts Offer Benefits to Mills, Environment
Turning our manufacturing byproducts into usable products is just one of the ways Domtar works to operate efficiently and responsibly. These efforts reduce costs, but they also can help balance soil chemistry and increase crop yields for local farmers. In addition, reusing byproducts keeps the material out of landfills. In 2019, we beneficially reused 67 percent of our pulp and paper manufacturing byproducts, compared to an industry average of 46 percent. Take, for example, our use of lime manufacturing byproducts to treat acidic wastewater. One mill’s “trash” is another mill’s “treasure.” Our Nekoosa and Rothschild mills have discovered a mutual benefit to the lime byproduct produced in the process of making pulp. The two mills, located about 50 miles apart in Wisconsin, use different processes for pulping, one of the earliest stages of papermaking. These processes leave Nekoosa with excess lime residuals and Rothschild with acidic wastewater. Click read more below for the rest of the article.