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
Managing our use of Natural Resources
Apart from energy, the two other major components required to manufacture paper are water and fibre.
Water Management and Recycling
Raw untreated water is essential for making paper and is used in a number of areas, including the transport of fibres through a paper machine and as a process coolant. Because a long-term reliable source of water is necessary for our production of paper, we have developed a far-reaching strategy to efficiently manage water usage at our mills in regional areas, where river flows and storages are under pressure.
Our Three Rs water principle – recycle, reuse and return – means we are doing all we can to reduce the amount of raw water used in making paper, including recycling every litre at least 5–6 times before cleaning it and discharging it from the mills. Each of our mills is located close to coastal waters and river systems. In accordance with our licence requirements, discharged water is treated and returned into the natural environment. In the last 12 months, our raw water used per tonne of production across all our mills dropped by 6.6 per cent through continuous recycling and efficiency innovations in manufacturing processes (see Chart 2 and Figure 3).
Chart 2. Paper Manufacturing Raw Water Use
| Year | Gross Production (tonnes) |
Raw Water Use m3 |
Raw Water Use m3/tonne |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000–2001 | 918,143 | 39,297,530 | 42.8 |
| 2001–2002 | 992,062 | 38,096,430 | 38.4 |
| 2002–2003 | 1,006,968 | 37,513,401 | 37.2 |
| 2003–2004 | 1,007,589 | 40,046,000 | 39.7 |
| 2004–2005 | 1,035,499 | 41,643,128 | 40.2 |
| 2005–2006 | 1,003,308 | 40,266,768 | 40.1 |
| 2006–2007 | 992,241 | 40,578,722 | 40.9 |
| 2007–2008 | 960,529 | 37,862,334 | 39.4 |
At our largest mill, the Maryvale Mill in Victoria, we implemented a new Water Action Plan to drive improvements through the pulp mill upgrade and other projects. And we intend to do more in the coming year by using recycled industrial and household waste water supplied by the nearby Gippsland Water Factory. These efforts will enable the recycling of approximately 8 ML of water each day at the mill. Over the next five years the mill is striving to achieve a further 10 per cent reduction in water use per tonne of pulp and paper.
Sustainable Fibre Sources
We are committed to producing paper products in a sustainable manner. One of the key issues for our Australian Manufacturing operation is that the wood fibre used in our paper products comes from sustainably managed sources.
This fibre is sourced from sustainably managed hardwood and softwood plantations, sustainably managed hardwood forests, and imported pulp and waste paper (see Figure 4). We do not own any forests. In each case, PaperlinX seeks evidence from suppliers that these sources are managed for long-term sustainability and that at no time is any of the fibre sourced from old-growth forests. For Australian Paper’s office papers, approximately one-third comes from local eucalypt plantations and the remainder is sourced from Victorian State Forests that are sustainably managed, comply with a variety of forestry standards, and are EPA-audited.
This year, the percentage mix of fibre supplies from plantations, waste and state-managed forests has been relatively stable with minor variations as a result of reduced production, shuts related to the pulp mill upgrade and the increased supply of fire salvaged wood from VicForests.
As plantation timber becomes increasingly available within Australia, we plan to significantly reduce the amount of fibre we source elsewhere. The pulp operations at Maryvale are being upgraded to make the site self-sufficient in pulp supply, thus eliminating the importation of bleached pulp, and increasing the pulp bleaching capacity.
This upgrade means that we will move to phase out the use of fibre from state-managed forests for communication papers by 2017.
Our paper manufacturing business, Australian Paper, is leading the way in providing certified Australian paper products to customers after it received dual chain-of-custody certifications by expanding its certifications under the Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes (PEFC) to all four Australian sites and maintaining its Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) chain-of-custody certification at all mainland sites. Chain-of-custody is the path taken by raw materials from forest to consumer, including all successive stages of processing, transformation, manufacturing and distribution.