UPM’s Biofore vision and consistent work on corporate responsibility has gained recognition: the company has been selected both as a Supersector Leader in Basic Resources sector and Forestry and Paper Sector Leader for 2012-2013 in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.
Continuous improvement in UPM’s environmental, social and financial performance is a fundamental part of the company’s Biofore strategy. The company’s products are based on renewable and recyclable raw materials, are produced with due care for resources, eco-systems and local communities, and are designed to help customers and society meet their own environmental and social aspirations.
Global megatrends, such as climate change and population growth, are driving resource scarcity and the rise in costs of raw material. The pressure on resources is coming from many angles, and resource scarcity is perhaps the most critical sustainability challenge to directly impact businesses. After all, most businesses rely on the availability of resources for their own survival.
Resource scarcity is one reason why UPM has focused on material and resource efficiency – creating more with less is a key driver for company’s operations. UPM has developed innovative ways to reduce its own waste and to reuse waste in new products, and to use resources sustainably. One of the best examples of the company’s thinking and resource efficiency is the zero waste strategy at Shotton Paper Mill in the UK. Not only is the mill based on the use of recovered materials, but it aims to use every last bit of those recovered resources to produce products or energy, and to waste nothing.
An estimated one million tonnes of renewable recoverable materials from UK urban conurbations and forests are processed through UPM Shotton every year, and today UPM Shotton uses 99.5% of the incoming materials. With the introduction of its new materials recovery facility, Shotton is able to process everyday materials such as plastics, cans and household waste that are found in the UK’s domestic recycling system. For each 200,000 tonnes of recyclable material that are sorted at the facility, about 120,000 tonnes are newspapers and magazines that are used at the mill as raw material.
In addition, UPM Shotton partnered with external waste management experts, and together came up with new valuable product, Fibrefuel. This is a unique pellet that constitutes mainly paper fibre retrieved from wet waste, which is then shipped back to Shotton in order to be burned for clean energy. As a result, the mill’s process waste is reduced from 20,000 tonnes per year to less than 1,000.
Some conventional technology, screens and magnets, but also new flotation technology, unique in the UK, is used to separate materials. Plastics are flash dried, granulated and bagged into a saleable product that can be used to make, among other things, furniture and railway sleepers.
Learn more on UPM’s responsibility at here.
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