Paper, the natural choice

Few materials can compare to paper. Paper is used everywhere in one form or another. Even better, paper boasts exceptional environmental credentials: it’s biodegradable, can be recycled, comes from an infinitely renewable resource and is produced in a sustainable manner. The future of paper products and applications is changing every day to meet new challenges and provide new solutions for society’s needs.

We hear all too often about the negative aspects of paper, but can you imagine a world without it. Not only is paper vital to our daily lives, it also yields social benefits as the industry employs more than 250,000 people in Europe, indirectly providing 1.8 million jobs in sectors such as publishing and packaging. This helps to generate wealth and creates jobs in predominantly rural areas, where it is often the only source of revenue for local populations.

Paper is so much a part of our daily lives that we take it for granted and rarely stop to think about the story behind our paper.

A low carbon economy and resource efficiency will shape our sustainable future. The paper industry is a good example of how these aspects go hand in hand with competitiveness. With its renewable raw materials, ecologically adapted forest management techniques, continually improving environmental processes and recyclable products, the industry has the potential to be recognised as a key player in ongoing efforts to protect our climate and environment.

Wood is the Kyoto material. It stores carbon over several hundred years throughout the lifecycle of wood-based products. The world’s forests are the second largest stores of CO2 after the oceans. Trees use an amazing process called photosynthesis, which captures and stores billions of tonnes of carbon without any adverse environmental effects day after day. Photosynthesis is the ultimate in green power, allowing us to respond to the challenges of climate change with achievable and sustainable solutions. The numbers tell their own story. For every tonne of wood produced by a tree, 1.5 tonnes of CO2 is eliminated from the atmosphere. But that’s just the beginning. When something is made from a tree, the carbon sequestered in the forests and then stored in the forest products themselves largely offsets the carbon produced by the manufacturing process.

Each year, over 100 billion tonnes of atmospheric CO2 is stored in wood products. Whether it’s basic building lumber or the latest novel, products from sustainably managed forests are key to reducing our carbon footprint. Everyone is concerned about disappearing forests but, at current rates of usage in Europe, trees for papermaking and other industrial uses constitute an endless resource.

More trees are growing than are being cut down and, thanks to better standards of forest management, Europe’s forests are getting bigger. Annually, forests in Europe are growing by 6,450 square kilometres – equivalent to 4,363 football pitches of new forest every day – and only 60 percent of this annual growth will be harvested. Wood reserves are now greater than one hundred years ago, despite an enormous rise in wood use over the last fifty years.

Rapidly increasing volumes of recovered paper are being used to manufacture paper and board. This means that over 50 percent of Europe’s papermaking fibres are now derived from recovered paper and board: a constantly renewed cycle.