Consultation on FSC Remedy Framework closing soon!

If you want to see just how complicated a supply chain can be, the operations of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) on Hainan Island, China, gives an idea of what goes into products that we often take for granted. And considering that APP is also an integral supplier to companies around the world, it is easy to see how one wayward employee or lax oversight can land a company in hot water with its stakeholders, particularly environmentalists. In APP’s case, its business on Hainan — from tree seedlings to the finished product — offers a case study on what it takes to evolve into a more responsible and sustainable company. Trees, obviously, are to APP what wheat, soy or palm oil are to other companies. APP’s managed forests in Indonesia combine to cultivate far more raw material for the company than its current holdings in China. But those forests, concentrated in Hainan, offer a sense of the scale APP has developed as the world continues to demand paper. APP’s most recent tour for journalists started from Haikou, the province’s capital and home to 2 million people. Skyscrapers and condominium high-rises eventually give way to a lush landscape of palm trees and plantations that grow just about everything from bananas to mangoes to rubber. After a 90-minute drive, we arrived at a site where eucalyptus trees soar when compared to the stalks of a papaya farm just a few hundred yards away.

Earlier this year, Starbucks sent 18 truckloads of old paper cups to a paper mill in Wisconsin to prove a point: Contrary to a widespread myth, paper coffee cups can be recycled cost-effectively. The cups–25 million in total, from excess inventory that the coffee chain otherwise would have sent to landfill–were processed at the mill. Then the recycled fiber was sent to another partner to be incorporated into paperboard for new Starbucks cups. The pilot project was a way to “demonstrate that a coffee cup can be turned back into a coffee cup,” says Jay Hunsberger, VP of sales for North America from Sustana, the mill that recycled the old cups. At the mill, the cups were mixed with water and ground into a pulp with a seven-foot-tall corkscrew to begin to separate the plastic lining that helps keep coffee cups from getting soggy. The fibers were screened and washed to finish the separation, then made into sheets and sent to WestRock, a packaging company, to be made into paperboard. At a third company, Seda, the board was printed with the Starbucks logo and shaped into new cups. Click read more below for additional detail.

The environmental degradation that has taken placed over the past several decades could have serious consequences for the future of the planet if action is not taken swiftly. According to the UN, if the global population reaches 9.6 billion by 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets could be required to provide the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles.[1] Moving away from the traditional “take, make, dispose” approach to production and working towards a Circular model, which replaces waste with the continual use of resources, is the way forward. Steel packaging continues to help drive the progress toward the Circular Economy in Europe. In 2019, the format achieved a record 84% recycling rate. The figure represents a 1.5% increase from 2018 and is the ninth consecutive year in which the overall recycling rate has risen. According to APEAL, the Association of European Producers of Steel Packaging, notable rises in countries such as Italy and Poland can be attributed to increased separate collection and greater public awareness of the benefits of steel recycling.