SUSTAINABILITY
REPORT

MANAGING OUR
ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT

In this section:

> Our Environmental Performance
> Our Carbon Footprint
> Managing our use of Natural Resources
> Our Products and the Environment

 

Our Carbon Footprint

Manufacturing is an energy intensive business. The transportation and storage of paper also uses energy. Our Sustainability Action Plan enables us to quantify our energy use and its environmental impact so that we can develop goals and strategies to improve performance.

Measuring our Performance

With many different businesses in various countries, the challenge is to obtain and to analyse comprehensive and comparable annual data. We are now using a new data collection tool that will improve this worldwide dataset.

Making comparisons is complicated by the different types of energy used across our global business infrastructure (excluding transport and logistics). They include electricity, gas (natural, processed and LPG), coal, fuel oil and diesel. In different countries, the electricity is generated from a number of sources (gas, coal, wind, hydro and nuclear) with varying environmental impacts.

However, with defined parameters we can quantify our primary energy uses for power and steam production, lighting, heating and cooling across our total global operations in Merchanting and Manufacturing, as set out here (see Figures 5 and 6). We can determine that last year our purchased electricity use in our manufacturing business was reduced by 7.4 per cent and our natural gas use increased by 12 per cent due to upgrading of coal-fired boilers to natural-gas-fired boilers. Our Merchanting business overall showed a similar pattern, but on a much smaller scale.

Figures 5 and 6

PaperlinX is Australia’s largest paper manufacturer, producing some 1,000 grades and weights of paper used every day in Australian homes and businesses. Our four manufacturing plants in three states in Australia are major energy consumers and provide both the focus and the opportunity for environmental improvements. On this scale, our Australian Paper Manufacturing operations use approximately 92 per cent of our global electricity consumption and 98 per cent of our global gas consumption. Consequently, we use the comprehensive Australian greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) data obtained from our four Manufacturing sites to evaluate our carbon impact and performance.

Every year, the manufacture of paper at our four Australian mills requires more than 10.5 petajoules of energy (equivalent to the energy used by 220,000 households) and produces around 950,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from within the mill gates.

Using the measure of tonnes of carbon dioxide per gross tonne of paper produced, over the last seven years our overall GGEs from Australian manufacturing have reduced by 23 per cent through energy efficiency opportunities and upgrading our assets (see Chart 1 and Figure 2).

Figure 1 Figure 2

Chart 1. Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Paper Manufacturing

Year Gross Paper Production
(tonnes)		 Total CO2 emissions
from purchased electricity
natural gas and fuel oil*
(tonnes)		 Greenhouse Gas Emissions
(CO2-e)/tonne of paper)
2000–2001 918,143 1,140,767 1.24
2001–2002 992,062 1,159,205 1.17
2002–2003 1,006,968 1,139,109 1.13
2003–2004 1,007,589 1,137,166 1.13
2004–2005 1,035,499 1,162,532 1.12
2005–2006 1,003,308 1,134,900 1.13
2006–2007 992,241 1,063,714 1.07
2007–2008 960,529 908,046 0.95

* Electricity, gas, fuel oil and coal are our major imported fossil fuel energy inputs and thus a major source of GGE. In addition, GGEs are generated by transport energy and methane production from waste.

Our Strategy to Reduce our Impact

Climate change and the production of greenhouse gases and pollution from many sources, particularly the generation and use of energy, are causing much concern around the globe.

In our Australian Manufacturing operations, fossil fuels and landfill are major sources of greenhouse gases. Our multi-pronged strategy to manage our environmental impact includes finding new opportunities for direct energy reduction, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, and putting less waste into landfill.

While the Company is working to reduce these quantities in credible and quantifiable ways, we have actually made continuous progress over the last few decades. For example, we have reduced energy use from fossil fuels per tonne of paper produced at Maryvale (our largest energy consumer) by 64 per cent over the last 20 years and we are maximising such renewable energy sources as biomass, hydroelectric and wind power.

Thus, the Australian Government’s commitment to a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme based on emissions trading for 2010 has implications for our business. In the last year, we have consulted with State and Federal governments and with our industry body, A3P, to understand the potential impact so that we can make the appropriate decisions on our carbon output and related costs, and play a role in the final design of the scheme. The Company supports such a scheme if the international competitiveness of carbon-intensive, trade-exposed industries such as ours can be maintained.

We continued to leverage renewable energy sources in our energy supply mix to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Renewable energy is derived from sources that cannot be depleted or can be replaced, and don’t produce greenhouse pollution. In Australia, around 43 per cent of the total energy used across all mills is sourced from purchased renewables, wood waste, black liquor and poppy seed waste.

Workshops were held at the Maryvale and Wesley Vale mills to identify further energy improvements as part of our Environment and Resource Efficiency Plan.

We are improving our assets to reduce our emissions. In the last year, we upgraded boiler operations at Wesley Vale and Shoalhaven from coal-fired and oil-fired to gas-fired installations, reducing GGEs by some 25,000 tonnes. Demands for water were reduced, and nitrous oxide and particulate emissions were cut.

Looking ahead, Australian Paper’s major upgrade of pulping operations and the construction of a new woodyard at Maryvale Mill will lead to environmental benefits, including:

Part of our commitment involves driving continuous improvement and meeting various obligations and legislative requirements in Australia that relate to our manufacturing operations, including:

Each of these requires an independent assessment of the Company’s environmental achievements. We are also involved in voluntary initiatives such as the Greenhouse Challenge Plus.

Transport Energy and Impacts

We are yet to quantify accurately the energy use of distribution and logistics operations in transporting fibre, pulp and paper products. This is because we use a mix of fully owned and operated delivery fleets (particularly in our UK and Dutch businesses) and third-party contracts throughout our international operations.

We are exploring ways to reduce our fleets or run them more efficiently, and some initiatives are already underway. In the UK, integrating the delivery operations of our three paper Merchanting businesses into the Delivery Co has reduced the size and improved the efficiency of the transport fleet through scheduling changes and the use of double-deck trailers and delivery vans. In some urban locations, we are trialling alternative fuel-sourced transport such as electric delivery vans that have zero operational emissions (see the case study in Our Products and the Environment). This year, we estimate that CO2 emissions were reduced by 600 tonnes of CO2 after mileage was reduced by 1 million kilometres. By late 2009, the more efficient use of the fleet is expected to bring a reduction of 25 per cent in carbon dioxide emissions.

In Australia, the current upgrade of the Maryvale pulp mill capacity will reduce our requirements of imported pulp (25 per cent currently – eucalypt and pine), reducing the indirect carbon emissions associated with transporting the pulp to the Victorian site.

Waste reduction and recycling

Waste disposal in landfill sites decomposes and produces methane gas, more potent in its greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.

Through the Sustainability Action Plan and our new data collection tool, we are trying to improve the measurement of the waste produced at our merchanting and manufacturing sites, identify reduction targets, and find new ways to reuse and recycle waste. This varies significantly from business to business because of the different wastes produced, for example paper, plastic, timber and wood by-products, chemicals, steel, inks. The availability of recycling opportunities and providers also differs in each of the countries in which we operate, making it difficult to measure our performance on a global basis.

Individually, our merchanting warehouses are increasing the recycling of wooden pallets, paper offcut waste and the plastic stretch wrap that protects paper products. For example, in Robert Horne’s distribution centres in the UK, over 2,000 tonnes of waste are created every year. Their recycling rate is now around 60 per cent. Across the Howard Smith business in the UK, 100 per cent of all wood and paper and 50 per cent of all plastic is recycled and in our New Zealand business, 65 per cent of all waste streams are recycled.

Recycling in our manufacturing operations includes reel cores, non-hazardous waste products, ferrous metals, hydrocarbons and raw material containers. At Maryvale Mill, the waste bark from sawlogs is supplied to a third party to produce garden mulch, and saltcake is reprocessed into a raw ingredient for detergents for the Australian market.

In the last year, a new solution was developed to handle the growing landfill disposal of waste fibre at the Maryvale Mill. The new joint venture project, which will divert over 60,000 tonnes of waste (65 per cent of all waste fibre at the mill) away from landfill, is outlined below.

 

tree seedlings

A WASTEFUL PROBLEM SOLVED

A joint venture between Australian Paper and Pinegro Products has developed a waste management solution to a growing landfill problem at our Maryvale Mill in Victoria, Australia. We will divert more than 60,000 tonnes of paper pulp waste annually from landfill (or 65 per cent of the mill’s solid waste) by directing it to a new processing site at the mill that will produce commercial soil additive products. Thus, we are not only reducing our landfill and the associated greenhouse gas emissions, but also recycling our waste. Work has begun to prepare the new composting facility, which will start in September 2008.

 

return to top