UPM’s Zero Solid Waste to Landfill initiative wins the Midwest Regional Sustainability Award in the US
UPM's Zero Solid Waste to Landfill initiative received the Gold Award in the Midwest Region Sustainability competition challenged by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Chicago. According to the panel of judges, UPM's initiative stands out as an excellent example highlighting Supply Managers' responsibility to lead, drive and influence sustainability initiatives within an organization. UPM's Zero Solid Waste to Landfill initiative, launched in 2016, is one of the ways in which UPM contributes to the United Nations sustainable development goals for the year 2030. The initiative focuses on five of the most challenging production side streams to recycle, starting in UPM's home country, Finland. The waste fractions are ash, sludge, sandy bark, dregs and mixed waste. The project's main goal is creating a permanent and scalable operational model around the existing forms of recycling and reuse of these challenging side streams, but it also looks into finding completely new, innovative ways to recycle and reuse the solid waste that has previously ended up in landfills. At UPM approximately 90 per cent of production waste is already today recycled or reused. Before initiating this project, UPM already had zero solid waste to landfill operations at its mills in Austria and Germany. click Read More below for additional detail