Confederation Of Paper Industries Joins Two Sides To Promote Sustainable Paper-Based Industries

UPM Raflatac’s Biofore Site™ concept engages factory employees and fosters a culture of sustainability in line with UPM’s 2030 responsibility targets. For many years, UPM Raflatac factories have operated ISO 14001-compliant, third-party certified environmental management systems to ensure continual environmental performance improvement. The Biofore Site™ concept expands on this foundation by including economic and social aspects. Since the 2017 pilot, each factory has created a unique path to improve its scorecard performance. A multi-parameter Biofore Site scorecard based on UN Sustainable Development Goals is used to monitor each factory’s progress.

The U.S. wind power industry is celebrating after reaching a new milestone in November: 70 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity. "That's enough to power about 19 million homes," says Michael Goggin, senior director of research at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). There are more than 50,000 wind turbines operating across 40 states and Puerto Rico, according to the AWEA.

In so many fundamental ways, environmental sustainability is baked into the nature of the paper and paper-based packaging industry – from the ability and financial incentive to regrow its primary raw material to the biodegradability of its products. As the call for the circularity of product lifecycles is growing louder, paper has always had a head start. And the industry’s strong support and investment in recycling has transformed the circularity of paper products from vision to reality. At a time when there is growing alarm about the low recycled rates of other materials, paper recycling is a stark exception. While the recycling rate of other materials is as low as the single digits – for example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports the recycling rate for plastics is just 8.7% – 66% of all paper products in the United States and 70% in Canada are being recycled. This is near the theoretical maximum recycling rate when items like hygiene products and long-held items such as archived records and books are excluded. For those grades that can be almost entirely recovered and reused, such as corrugated cardboard boxes, the recycling rates are higher than 90%.