Thai Forest Certification System submitted for assessment

Soilfood Oy has been selected as the winner of Metsä Group’s sustainability competition for suppliers. The company produces soil improvement materials for farms and recycled materials for industry from the waste and side streams of the forest industry, for example. This year, Metsä Group invited service and product suppliers to its first sustainability competition, which received a total of 92 entries. Soilfood uses side streams containing nitrogen, phosphorus, lime and carbon, among others, in its products. “Instead of being burned, these materials arising from our production are reused and returned to nature to improve the growth conditions of fields. The material obtained from forest industry waste also reduces the need for new raw materials in the production of fertilisers. Our cooperation with Soilfood is a good example of the circular economy, which benefits all parties,” says Katja Tuomola, VP, Sustainability Management at Metsä Group.

“We delivered 103.5 million seedlings, which is over a million more than our previous record. It’s great to have succeeded so well, especially considering the coronavirus pandemic. In the spring, we were concerned that we would be forced to discard seedlings due to the coronavirus, but it turns out we didn’t have to. Instead, we had a record season that will be hard to beat for a while,” says Peter Engblom, business developer at NorrPlant. Of the 103.5 million seedlings that were delivered, 63 million were pine seedlings, 33 million spruce seedlings, 7 million contorta pine seedlings and nearly 600,000 larch seedlings. “Pine dominates the forests owned by SCA. Deliveries of pine seedlings are also increasing among our external customers,” says Peter. The majority of seedlings were delivered to external customers, from Karlstad in the south to Kiruna in the north. NorrPlant also exported some seedlings to Sweden’s neighboring countries.

While deceptively simple, this sheet is made from cellulose nanofibers and has a layered internal architecture designed to remove viruses from water, according to a news release from Uppsala University on May 18. The paper filter improves upon other methods such as chemical disinfectants, which can produce toxic by-products. “Our goal is to develop a filter paper that can remove even the toughest viruses from water as easily as brewing coffee,” said Albert Mihranyan, who heads the study at Uppsala University. In 2014, the team had described a paper filter that removes larger viruses, and now researchers have their eye on refining the filter to remove smaller viruses.