Sustainability begins at home
June 23rd 2008

Users of paper products must minimise their consumption and waste to achieve environmental benefits, says Jaana Tiura, brand marketing manager of Katrin at Metsä Tissue. Tim McManan-Smith reports

In Western Europe, people use 15kg/capita/year of tissue paper in the toilet. Eastern Europeans use only 2kg. It may not be possible to reduce levels used in Western Europe down to the level of Eastern Europe but it does highlight the fact that there is plenty of scope for waste minimisation. “With regard to being green with tissue paper we have to look at what people can do to change their behaviour,” says Tiura, “it is important for users to minimise consumption and waste”.

‘Less is More’ is a theme of Metsä Tissue’s Katrin brand. The Katrin range contributes to reduced consumption through its dispensers. “Choosing the right combination of dispensers and tissue products can really make the difference, ensuring maximum performance and generating less waste. The economy, environment, and hygiene; Metsä Tissue’s aims to keep these three things in balance”.

The UK is slowly waking up to the fact that all areas of a business including washrooms must be green, which has long been the case in mainland Europe. “In the UK it is a hot topic,” comments Tiura, “but in other European countries it is a given. In general, environmental labels are looked for when purchasing products and if they do not have them then the product will not be in the tender”. Tiura continues, “In the UK price is still a big factor but that will change. Obviously price is high up the list in the rest of Europe but quality and the environment are also very big when choosing a product.”

While recycled paper accounts for around 50 per cent of the fibre used by the company, 96 per cent of the virgin fibre comes from third party certified forests. Use of recycled fibre raw material is defined by the specific quality requirements of each product. Metsä Tissue’s objective is to use primarily recycled fibres whenever it provides the adequate quality level for the final product. When asked why more recycled fibre could not be used in the final products, Tiura states: “Aside from the quality issue there is a lack of availability world-wide for recycled fibres, particularly due to China buying it up. We aim to source all of the virgin fibre from certified forests and there is no difference in the production of the final product, except for the fact that recycled fibres need to be washed.”

“With our product, perhaps the biggest environmental impact is from logistics and we try hard to minimise this,” says Tiura. Ecufriendly transport is something that Metsä Tissue takes seriously not only the type of transport chosen but the pallet that are used. The majority of products are transported on CHEW pallet that are part of the CHEW red-use system, or by national red-use systems created for transport pallet. Broken pallet are used as energy waste at its mills. The company’s mills are also located as close to the market as possible, therefore benefiting from short transport distances, minimising emissions.

In addition, the Metsä Tissue mills incorporate quality and environmental management systems that meet international ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards. With ten mills – three in Germany, three in Sweden, two in Poland and one each in Finland and Slovakia – Metsä Tissue manufactures an annual production capacity of about 600,000 tons. Across all of these there have been initiatives to save both energy and water use in a bid to minimise the environmental impact of its business activities. These include district heating schemes powered from a mill in Sweden, a 30 per cent reduction of water use at one of its Finnish mills and incineration of sludge from the de-inking process at another Finnish mill.

When questioned about the age-old paper versus textile versus hand dryer, Tiura is frank. “You have to look at the life cycle costs.

Hand dryers are expensive [in energy costs] to manufacture and they use electricity when they are in use. When cloths are used they have to laundered and transported throughout their life. Everybody does their own lifecycle analysis.”

Metsä’s belief is that with the right paper products, sustainably sourced, manufactured, transported, dispensed and disposed of, you can mitigate the effects upon the environment. But it won’t change people habits and it will be interesting to see if Western Europe can slim down its 15kg figure.

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