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 Products and the Environment
Through our Sustainability Charter, we are committed to providing our customers with product options that have strong environmental credentials. Each of our businesses works closely with customers to communicate the high environmental standards of our products. Our businesses conduct surveys and focus groups with printers and other customers to keep abreast of paper requirements and customer satisfaction.
Supply Chain Assurance
Our paper merchants are a most important link in the chain, taking products from mills to commercial printers, envelope converters, stationers and resellers, corporate printers, publishers and end users.
We believe that it is important to be able to demonstrate assurance that the wood fibre used in the paper sold by our merchants is sourced from sustainably managed forests. We support many internationally recognised, independent environmental certification systems, such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accreditation process, the Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), because they provide assurance to customers. When we receive a chain-of-custody certification, it confirms our ability to trace paper through each link in the fibre-handling chain, right back to its sustainable forest or plantation of origin.
In the last year, we have been working hard to ensure that our mills and merchants in Australia, New Zealand and Asia, Europe and North America are in the process of securing multiple certifications. By 2009, every operating company will be expected to have multiple chain-of-custody certifications.
Working with our Major Paper Suppliers
With a business that spans many countries and provides hundreds of paper products, no single certification system will fit all products. To ensure that we can provide certainty to customers, PaperlinX has documented environmental, health and safety requirements with which our major strategic paper suppliers must conform. Paper suppliers are required to report annually to PaperlinX on the following areas:
- Compliance with all regulatory requirements in the countries in which the supplier operates.
- Established environmental management systems (EMS) and independent third-party certification of these systems.
- Independent third-party certification of appropriate sustainable forest management standards.
Products with Environmental Credentials
With community support for recycling and natural products, there is growing demand for recycled and environmentally certified paper stocks. While it is commonly thought that the major benefit from paper recycling is forest preservation, recycling efforts contribute to reducing landfill waste and, consequently, greenhouse gas emissions.
Worldwide, our businesses are well positioned to meet our customers’ environmental requirements. This year we launched two new products with the environment in mind. We developed the first Australian-made range of carbon-neutral papers, called ENVI™ (see the case study in Our Environmental Performance) and launched a unique combined office paper delivery and waste collection service in the UK, called yoyo™ (see the case study below).
Many of our businesses sell papers bearing a range of environmental certifications from external organisations such as the FSC, PEFC and SFI, which confirms that certified wood is used in their production.
In the UK, the Robert Horne Group (a PaperlinX operating company) became the first member of the WWF-UK Forest and Trade Network in 2005. This year, Australian Paper qualified as a member of the World Wildlife Fund’s Australian Forest and Trade Network. This initiative promotes responsible forest management and credible forest certification and enables companies to identify and move towards products from credibly certified forests.
We produce ‘green paper guides’ and fact sheets to help customers all over the world choose the most appropriate environmentally certified paper grades for their paper needs. Many of our businesses also support information events to raise awareness of environmental certifications in the design and printing industry.
When it comes to manufacturing recycled paper in Australia, we use more than 46,000 tonnes of waste packaging and papers annually to produce the largest range of fine papers with recycled content in the Asia-Pacific region. Our recycled content ranges between 10 per cent and 100 per cent, depending on the intended use of the paper. For example, the well-known Reflex paper range (Australia’s number one office paper) was expanded to include Reflex 100, a 100% recycled office paper, launched in November 2007. In the last year, recycled content products represented 25 per cent of total product sales, up from 12 per cent in 2005–2006.
Encouraging recycling and reuse of our products is another way we manage our environmental impact. As a founding member of Paper Round, the Australian Print and Paper Industries’ Product Stewardship initiative, we are actively involved in contributing data, educating consumers, identifying ways to improve office paper waste recovery, and informing public debate. As a packaging manufacturer, we are also a signatory to the Australian Government’s National Packaging Covenant and have voluntarily developed an annual action plan to minimise the environmental impacts of packaging waste.
PAPER IS GOOD, WASTE IS BAD
Our UK companies, the Howard Smith Paper Group, Robert Horne Group and The Paper Company, recently introduced yoyo™, a unique service that sources, delivers, takes away and recycles office paper for businesses. It guarantees customers that their paper waste is recycled into office paper. UK businesses use more than one million reams of office paper every working day. With over half of this going to landfill, yoyo™ is clearly an important initiative. We combine paper delivery and waste collection in the same delivery vehicle to reduce the customer’s carbon footprint and we are introducing zero-emission electric delivery vehicles in urban areas. The yoyo™ service will be launched soon in the Netherlands and internationally. www.yoyopaper.com