CHALLENGING THE ‘MYTHS’ AROUND PAPER PACKAGING For Koehler Paper Group – a long-established company but a relatively new entrant to the packaging market – there are many misconceptions around paper. Eckhard Kallies, Director of Flexible Packaging, and Jens Kriete, Sustainability Manager, explain why they believe brand owners should consider making the switch to this material.
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re we in the middle of a plastic backlash, or just at the start of it? Or are we seeing doubts emerging? We read stories about the LCA of paper and the resource-intense nature of its production; about the recycling rates and doubts about the use of timber. We know that achieving sufficient barrier properties for perishable goods is an ongoing challenge, as are increasingly stringent EU recycling quotas. Without a doubt, these are all legitimate concerns, but what is the reality behind them? Koehler Paper Group is keen to at least address some of the ‘myths’ that have grown up around paper.
“If forest is planted, about 2500 seedlings are planted per hectare. Nature can do it also on its own. If a forest area is cleared by a fire or storm soon young seedlings will reclaim that space and that can (depending on the local conditions) be many thousands per hectare. What will we see after 100 years? Well, we will see about 300 trees per hectare. Regardless of whether foresters thinned and harvested in the meantime or not Trees in forests compete for air, nutrients and water and not all trees survive that competition. Foresters make use of this process – they regularly harvest weaker trees helping the strong trees to get stronger quicker.”
Claim: The paper industry is causing europe’s forests to shrink
Claim: Paper production is very resource- and C02- intensive
Those who argue in favour of the use of forest products would say they that the forests are managed responsibly and they have been for centuries. As a side note: The German word for sustainability, ‘Nachhaltigkeit’, is actually a forestry term. According to Two Sides – between 2005 and 2020 European forests grew in area by 58,390 square kilometres. That’s an area bigger than Switzerland. “This is actually not so easy to explain in two sentences. People have diffculties with the idea that trees are cut for paper and cut in general as we seem to have a certain emotional connection to trees,” says Jens Kriete. The rational side however is “Forests are a place of rising, growing and passing regardless of whether we intervene or not.”
Europe’s paper industry is currently the biggest producer of renewable energy in the EU. Koehler’s own paper mill at Kehl uses biomass energy, and it is by no means the outlier: 60% of the industry’s fuel consumption is biomass-based, according to the FAO. If biofuel is predominantly employed, the argument goes, then the CO2 impact is greatly reduced. According to CEPI, the direct CO2 emissions of the European pulp and paper industry reduced by 25% between 2005 and 2017. It is true, however, that paper production is energy- and resource-intensive. When it comes to water; it is an integral part of the pulp and paper making process. That being said, the argument from the paper industry is that, while we use a lot of water, the industry’s water loops are optimized.
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