Holmen: A hundred-year perspective on sustainability
The brownish water and dead seabeds are gone. This year Iggesund Paperboard, manufacturer of the paperboards Invercote and Incada, can look back on a century’s unique performance record on sustainability. Iggesund Mill opened its first pulp mill in 1916, which was expanded to become an integrated pulp and paperboard mill in 1963.
I’m proud to have the privilege of working for a company whose environmental efforts are characterised by both a long-term approach and a sense of responsibility,” comments Anna Mårtensson, Environmental Managerat Iggesund Paperboard’s Swedish production facility, Iggesund Mill. “Today our environmental impact is almost non-existent compared with the situation just over 50 years ago.”
When Iggesund built its first pulp mill in 1916, environmental legislation did not exist and companies were basically free to release fibre waste and chemicals into the air and water. During the mill’s first 50 years this caused a significant negative effect on the local environment. The first emissions limits were set in 1963, symbolically the same year that biologist Rachel Carson’s famous book about the influence of pesticides on nature, Silent Spring, was published and became the alarm clock that laid the foundation of today’s environmental movement. Click Read More below for additional detail.