Domtar has successfully completed a surveillance audit on the Wabigoon Forest for the new Forest Stewardship Council (FSC^®) National Standard for Canada. The audit took place the week of July 13th ending with the auditor’s recommendation for certification to be maintained under the new Canadian standard. This new standard replaced the previous FSC^® Boreal standard and has set the bar high for demonstrating sustainable forest management. The Wabigoon Forest was first certified to the FSC^® standard in 2008.

“Our on-the-ground management practices, coupled with a rigorous provincially mandated forest management planning process, helps to hit the mark with FSC^®,” said Marie Cyr, general manager of the Dryden pulp mill. “We are proud of our record of sustainable forest management. The fact that the Dryden mill has been operating in this forest area for over 100 years demonstrates that we are managing our forests sustainably.”

The new FSC^® National Standard for Canada requires a comprehensive audit of legal compliance, protection of high conservation values, environmental impacts, management planning and community relations including free prior and informed consent. The audit process, which is designed to identify opportunities for improvement, found 4 minor non-conformance issues, all of which have been addressed with action plans and approved by the auditing body.

“The success of this audit demonstrates progress towards our sustainability goals,” said Paige Goff, vice president of sustainability. “Independent third party forest certification like FSC^® is important to our customers and reflects our commitment to sustainability.”

Domtar is also licensed to manage the Trout Lake forest in Ontario which is on target to undergo an FSC^® pre-assessment audit later this year.

Ahead of Earth Overshoot Day (August 22), Pro Carton, the European Association of Carton and Cartonboard manufacturers, is revealing the latest episode in the Carton Campaigners animation series.

With over one million online views of the Carton Campaigners’ videos this year, Pro Carton is launching the next in the series to educate young and old about their personal responsibilities when it comes to protecting the planet and its vital resources.

Anthropomorphic graphics bring the message of Earth Overshoot Day to life for younger generations

While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused this year’s expected overshoot date to be extended to the latest it has been since 2005, humanity's demand on natural resources continues to exceed what Earth's ecosystems can regenerate in a year.

In the new video, cartoon characters Ricki Recycle, Renée Renew, Ryan Reuse, Rhianna Reduce and Ronnie Replace will show how each of the actions they represent – the 5Rs of Responsibility – should be a priority for every individual. Pro Carton also hopes that spreading this message to younger generations will help to push Earth Overshoot Day later in the future.

The Carton Campaigners illustrate the 5Rs of Responsibility

Tony Hitchin, General Manager of Pro Carton, said: “We’ve had some wonderfully positive responses to the Carton Campaigners, so it seemed only right to use them to shine a light on Earth Overshoot Day and explain how our actions impact the planet.”

“Even though the date lands three weeks later than last year, this is predominantly due to COVID-19 lockdowns and reduction in travel. We want to make sure this trend carries on into the future through environmentally-friendly choices, such as opting for renewable, recyclable and biodegradable packaging materials like cartonboard.”

Metsä Board's Kyro mill will be 150 years old this year, 2020. The wood grinding plant along the Kyröskoski rapids was started up in 1870. Since then, the Kyro mill has manufactured market wood pulp, groundwood, sawn timber, various papers and paperboard for international markets. Today, it is a modern and efficient mill that produces high-quality folding boxboard for Metsä Board, part of Metsä Group. 

“Kyro people are proud of their mill. Our staff have always lived with changes and challenging times have been overcome by working together. People commit themselves to the mill for a long time, with families often having several generations involved. This has positively influenced the kind of mill Kyro is today,” says Petri Huiko, VP and mill manager of Metsä Board Kyro. 

“Continued development is key to the success, efficiency and production quality of our paperboards and we are proud to continue to develop Kyro as generations before us have done,” added Petri.

Last year, Metsä Board Kyro began manufacturing a new plastic free eco-barrier board for food and food service packaging and introduced artificial intelligence (AI) to its quality control. In addition, the mill’s board machine finishing area is presently being modernised. The rebuild includes a new reeler, a winder and the renewal of the reel broke handling system. The investment value is EUR 20 million and the new machinery is scheduled to start during the autumn of 2021.

AMETEK Surface Vision, a world leader in automated online surface inspection solutions, has extended its global service and technical support for industrial customers to ensure operations continue safely and effectively.

The pandemic has seen an increased demand in critical industries such as nonwovens, paper, and food packaging. AMETEK Surface Vision has fast-tracked its enhanced plans for remote support to ensure maximum productivity and efficiency in these areas.

Surface Vision’s two surface inspection and monitoring product lines, the SmartView^® and SmartAdvisor^® systems, are in use by customers around the world, requiring continual support in a range of industries including metal, paper, plastics, and non-wovens.

In particular, the company has seen an increase in requests to optimize systems detection and classification as industrial mills have changed their product mixes in response to the pandemic. Surface Vision provides a full-featured remote support platform to facilitate these requests, allowing mills to adapt to changing priorities.

With travel restrictions in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Surface Vision customer support engineers are working more remotely, which has allowed the team to be more responsive as they are available online for longer. 

Technical services have been extended with a new Preventive Maintenance Remote Check-up Service. This service will ensure that the equipment is proactively reviewed on a regular basis, uncovering potential issues before they become a costly problem.

Yamina Lansari, Global Manager of Technical Services at AMETEK Surface Vision, comments, “The pandemic has prompted us to evaluate how effectively we deliver services to our customers.

Our support service is built as a partnership with our customers, who often have mission-critical systems that need our help. Our service engineers are well versed in, and available for, remote service delivery. On-site service is also available to supplement and augment our remote offerings where it is business-critical and where regulations allow.”  

Additional extended services include a secure remote portal where Surface Vision can quickly and safely restore service to critical surface inspection and monitoring equipment. The company will also provide customers access to internal expertise and a large product knowledge database. 

AMETEK Surface Vision has a broad product range optimized for the monitoring and inspection of webs and surfaces, as well as process surveillance applications. For more information, visit www.ameteksurfacevision.com.

About AMETEK Surface Vision

AMETEK Surface Vision is a world leader in automated online surface inspection solutions with a broad product portfolio optimized for web and surface inspection as well as monitoring and process surveillance applications.

Its product portfolio includes two distinct product lines: SmartView^® systems and SmartAdvisor^® systems. Each product line uniquely enables customers to inspect the surfaces of materials processed in a continuous fashion across the metals, paper, plastics, nonwovens and glass industries. Learn more by visiting ameteksurfacevision.com.

AMETEK Surface Vision is a unit of AMETEK Process and Analytical Instruments, a division of AMETEK, Inc., a global manufacturer of electronic instruments and electromechanical devices with annual sales of approximately $5 billion.

Stora Enso has appointed Annette Stube as EVP, Head of Sustainability and a member of the Group Leadership Team. She will start on 1 September 2020.

Annette Stube is a Danish citizen who joins from a position as Head of Sustainability in A.P. Moller–Maersk, an integrated transport and logistics company. Previously she has worked as Director of Sustainability programmes in the global healthcare company Novo Nordisk. She has a master’s degree in psychology and an Executive Board Education from Copenhagen Business School. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Finnish energy company Fortum.

Annette StubeAnnette Stube succeeds Stora Enso’s current Head of Sustainability Noel Morrin who retires in the end of year 2020. Noel Morrin joined Stora Enso in 2015.

“I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Noel for his valuable and committed work for Stora Enso. He has played an essential role in setting an ambitious sustainability agenda for Stora Enso and taking the Group’s sustainability reporting to a high level. We have set ambitious targets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and seen good progress in that during the past years,” says Stora Enso’s President and CEO Annica Bresky.

“I am happy to welcome Annette Stube to our leadership team. Her experience in pioneering and leading sustainability work in global organizations is very valuable and will support us in our continued transformation as “The renewable materials company”. Her background in developing sustainability-based business opportunities and innovations will also strengthen us,” Annica Bresky continues.

“I am happy to join Stora Enso, a true sustainability front-runner. Stora Enso is uniquely positioned as a solution provider in a low-carbon, circular bioeconomy with renewable raw materials, having sustainability at the core of its strategy. Standing on solid sustainability governance and high-quality reporting, Stora Enso is ready to take the next step,” Annette Stube says.

Part of the bioeconomy, Stora Enso is a leading global provider of renewable solutions in packaging, biomaterials, wooden constructions and paper. We believe that everything that is made from fossil-based materials today can be made from a tree tomorrow. Stora Enso has some 25 000 employees in over 30 countries. Our sales in 2019 were EUR 10.1 billion. Stora Enso shares are listed on Nasdaq Helsinki (STEAV, STERV) and Nasdaq Stockholm (STE A, STE R). In addition, the shares are traded in the USA as ADRs (SEOAY). storaenso.com

OPTIX™ Applied Intelligence platform identifies patterns in paper machine data, delivering digital process improvement recommendations for product quality purposes

Solenis, a leading global producer of specialty chemicals, is working with a North American tissue maker to deliver continuous process improvement with autonomous chemistry control through its secure OPTIX™ Applied Intelligence artificial intelligence (AI) platform.

Developed with ProcessMiner™, a leading AI platform, Solenis’ adaptive analytics system accurately learns complex variable relationships in pulp and paper manufacturing processes and yields a digital measure of product quality. Autonomous manufacturing using AI with machine learning allows for improved product quality, optimized use of raw materials and reduced water and energy consumption.

Deployed at St. Croix Tissue in Baileyville, Maine, OPTIX recently enabled the mill to accomplish something that was previously impossible. Using a closed-loop controller in conjunction with OPTIX quality parameter predictions, the mill was able to control its strength chemistry autonomously to ensure optimal chemical feed and adhere to target parameters.

Photo courtesy of St. Croix Tissue

“OPTIX has shown that it can reasonably predict different lab-tested parameters,” said Devin Rose, technical manager at St. Croix Tissue. “We’ve used this prediction in a closed-loop controller and successfully reduced variation in the final product. As a result, we’re excited about the value of this program.”

Launched by Solenis in early 2019, the novel OPTIX platform is operational in nine paper mills throughout North America and Europe, with additional deployments in progress. AI-powered predictive analytics of key quality parameters allows for on-the-fly process improvement, real-time process insights and continuous chemical control leading to improved target adherence, improved product quality and substantial cost savings.

COVID-19 is accelerating the need for autonomous manufacturing as operators seek to improve operational efficiency without making significant cap-ex investments and limiting human interaction. As a result, there has been mounting interest in the OPTIX platform, which enables the application of autonomous control to extend well beyond strength chemistry.

“Solenis continues to deliver innovative solutions that solve the complex problems that exist in the pulp and paper industry,” said Andreas Türk, president, Eurasia, Solenis. “Our partnership with ProcessMiner enables us to uniquely deliver the cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning technology required for real-time, predictive analytics and autonomous manufacturing. Our latest OPTIX offering, autonomous chemistry optimization, is another example of Solenis delivering the value our customers need to stay competitive.”

“Solenis has been the ideal partner for driving autonomous manufacturing in the pulp and paper industry, leveraging the technology we’ve developed,” said Karim Pourak, cofounder and CEO, ProcessMiner. “The deep domain expertise the Solenis team brings, coupled with our industry-leading data science team, has been a winning combination. We expect rapid adoption and mill expansion of the OPTIX platform in this industry as a result of our recent autonomous control success at St. Croix Tissue. With a shrinking workforce in manufacturing, AI is an investment that manufacturers need to consider in keeping up with demand and product quality service levels.”

For more details on OPTIX Applied Intelligence, please visit solenis.com/OPTIX.

Eero Aarnio, an artist worldwide famous for furniture designs, such as the iconic Ball Chair, has designed an eco-playhouse made with corrugated board. Aarnio has always been interested in different materials and the opportunities they create. Corrugated board has a particular fascination for him due to its light weight and environmental credentials.

Thanks to its design and the lightweight board construction the playhouse can be conveniently moved from place to place. The playhouse can be set up indoors or outdoors, if the weather permits. It can also be folded up for easy storage. “During this exceptional period people have spent more time at home with their families. Assembling a playhouse is a nice thing to do together and gives enjoyment to the whole family,” commented Eero Aarnio. “In the past, my own children have built huts out of empty corrugated boxes,” Aarnio recalls. 

The sustainable white kraftliner materials provided for the production of the playhouse are made by Metsä Board, part of Metsä Group. Metsä Board’s white kraftliners were used for the surfaces: MetsäBoard Pro WKL 160 g/m2 was chosen for the outside due to its smooth printing surface and MetsäBoard Natural WKL Bright 160 g/m2 for the inner surface. The used kraftliner type is B-flute.  

“Screen printing technology gives the liner surface a uniform, beautiful colour tone. MetsäBoard Pro WKL provides fast drying of the printed ink. Thanks to its high printability and excellent production efficiency, it was an ideal material for this project,” comments Ilkka Harju, Packaging Services Director EMEA and APAC Metsä Board.

The playhouse has been produced by two Finnish company Futupack and Capertum.

Pioneering solution uniquely offers continuous monitoring of paper machine drives’ performance for near real-time insights that diagnose problems, optimize performance and save mills money

ABB has just launched the Paper Machine Drives Performance, a pioneering digital data analysis solution providing pulp and paper manufacturers with detailed insights into their drive system health to improve runnability and reliability, reduce sheet breaks and ultimately improve paper quality.

Paper Machine Drives Performance is the only continuous monitoring, drive-specific digital service that leverages a digital twin to better model and evaluate system drive control performance. Applying an advanced calculation engine to critical system data permits near real-time performance monitoring for web tension, speed control, draw and load share. This in turn enables drive system control optimization, faster troubleshooting and more informed asset decisions​.

The system also provides advance warnings of potential failures and maintenance alerts, which enable mills to undertake predictive maintenance, reducing unplanned downtime and higher maintenance costs.

“Customers are always seeking better ways to understand their drive system health while efficiently identifying the root cause of any issues,” said Sanath Kumar, Global Product Manager for Paper Machine Drives, ABB. “Our new solution is the only available offering that specifically monitors paper machine drive control performance to provide near real-time detail on performance status, plus predictive alerts and root cause insights to optimize control and leverage predictive maintenance strategies.”

Removing the need for manual data collection, Paper Machine Drives Performance leverages the ABB Ability™ platform to collect and analyze a breadth and depth of data that would otherwise be unachievable. Part of the ABB Ability™ Performance Service for paper mills family, the service follows ABB’s proven ‘diagnose, implement, sustain’ methodology, helping grow and optimize performance and is delivered via ABB Ability™ Collaborative Operations.

Valmet will supply start-up clothing to Stora Enso’s Oulu Mill in Finland. The start-up clothing includes forming fabrics, press felts, shoe press belts and dryer fabrics. The clothing order is related to Stora Enso’s paper machine (PM 7) grade conversion project delivered by Valmet.

The order is included in Valmet’s orders received of the third quarter 2020. The clothing will be delivered for the start-up of the rebuilt BM 7, which is scheduled for the end of 2020. The value of the order is not disclosed.

“Valmet has been our main clothing supplier in Oulu for a long time. We are pleased to continue working together in this strategic project, too, as the performance of the fabrics and felts is crucial for end product quality and production efficiency. We have set high requirements for the technical support at the start-up and during optimization. We trust that Valmet can meet our expectations,” says Janne Myllykangas, Area Manager BM 7 and Deputy Project Director at Stora Enso.

“We are happy that Stora Enso has chosen our clothing for the start-up of BM 7. All in all, the order includes 50 percent of the forming fabrics and press felts, and 100 percent of the dryer fabrics for the first two years with an option for the third year. Valmet Black Belt shoe press belts were already included in Stora Enso’s earlier order for this project. Our Industrial Internet application for PMC (paper machine clothing) remote analytics is also included into the delivery,” says Martti Heinola, Director, Paper Machine Clothing, Valmet.

Valmet and Stora Enso have also signed a Performance Agreement including technical support to accelerate the start-up curve.

Information about the customer Stora Enso

Stora Enso is a leading global provider of renewable solutions in packaging, biomaterials, wooden constructions, and paper. The company employs some 26,000 people in more than 30 countries. The Oulu Mill in northern Finland currently produces wood-free coated paper and bleached softwood pulp.

Many banks, utilities, telecoms and other service providers continue to encourage (and sometimes force) their customers to switch from paper to electronic communications, using claims that electronic communication is “greener,” “saves trees” or “protects the planet” as justification. One can only conclude that the CEOs of these companies are either 1) misinformed about the inherent sustainability of print and paper, the rapidly expanding environmental footprint of digital communication or both, 2) trusting marketing teams who don’t bother to validate environmental claims or 3) seeking to save costs by ignoring established environmental marketing rules from the U.S. FTC and Canadian Standards Association that say marketers “should not make broad, unqualified environmental benefit claims like “green” and that “claims should be clear, prominent and specific.”

Growth of electronic devices and e-waste

There’s no arguing that the use of electronic devices has exploded over the last decade. According to a 2019 study by the Pew Research Center, the vast majority of Americans (81%) now own smartphones, up from just 35% in 2011.  Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults now own desktop or laptop computers, and roughly half now own tablets and e-readers.  This boom has resulted in many advances that make our lives more efficient, productive and enjoyable. But it has also brought with it serious and increasing environmental, health and economic consequences.

According to the recently released Global E-waste Monitor (GEM) 2020, a record 53.6 million metric tons (Mt) of electronic waste was generated in 2019, up 21% in just five years. For perspective, last year’s e-waste weighed as much as 350 cruise ships the size of the Queen Mary 2, enough to form a line 76 miles long. The GEM describes e-waste as discarded products with a battery or plug. Small electronic equipment, screens and monitors, small IT and telecommunication equipment comprised more than half of global e-waste last year. The U.S. and Canada collectively generated 7.7 Mt of electronic waste in 2019. That’s 46 lbs. per person, and nearly three times the worldwide per capita generation of 16 lbs.

The report also predicts global e-waste, will reach 74 Mt by 2030, almost a doubling of e-waste in just 16 years. This makes e-waste the world’s fastest-growing waste stream, fueled by higher consumption rates of electric and electronic devices, short device life cycles and few options for repair.  Many people now see devices and appliances as ultimately disposable, simply discarding them when it’s time for an upgrade. Others may hold on to them, but are unable to find a cost-effective way to repair them.

Little e-waste is recycled

The GEM found that only 17.4% of e-waste was collected and recycled globally in 2019, with only 15% of e-waste in North America recycled. Most e-waste was either dumped or burned rather than being collected for recycling and reuse.

Numerous toxic and hazardous substances are found in electronic equipment and pose severe risk to the environment and human health when not handled in an environmentally sound manner. Recent research cited in the GEM found that unregulated e-waste is associated with increasing numbers of adverse health effects, from birth defects and altered neurodevelopment to DNA damage, adverse cardiovascular and respiratory effects and cancer.

E-waste also represents a huge economic loss. When electronic devices are simply thrown away, high-value, recoverable materials such as iron, copper and gold are thrown away with them. “If we cannot recycle electronic waste, we’re not taking back materials into the loop, which means we have to extract new raw materials,” says Vanessa Forti, the lead author of the GEM.  It’s estimated that the value of raw materials in all global e-waste generated in 2019 equaled a staggering $57 billion US, more than the gross domestic product of most countries.

Electronic communication, energy consumption and climate change

The miniaturization of equipment and the “invisibility” of the infrastructures used leads many to underestimate the environmental footprint of digital technology. This phenomenon is reinforced by the widespread availability of services on the “cloud,” which makes the physical reality of use all the more imperceptible and leads to underestimating the direct environmental impacts of digital technology.

By 2023, global tech giant Cisco estimates that North America will have 345 million internet users (up from 328 million in 2018), and 5 billion networked devices/connections (up from 3 billion in 2018).  The U.S. Department of Energy reports that U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 70 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2014, representing about 1.8% of total U.S. electricity consumption. Based on current trend estimates, U.S. data centers are projected to consume approximately 73 billion kWh in 2020. This energy consumption does not include the energy required to build, power or recharge the devices.

 According to The Shift Project, a carbon transition think tank, the energy consumption required for digital technologies is increasing 9% each year and the share of digital technology in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could double to 8% by 2025. The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory analyzed 113 information technology companies in 2014 and found that only 14% of the energy consumed was from renewable sources.

The contrasts between electronic and paper communications are well-defined

The magnitude of the negative impacts resulting from the use of electronic communication should be cause enough for companies to abandon their unverifiable greenwashing claims that going digital is better for the environment, but the comparison with paper-based communication should seal the deal for those that are committed to responsible marketing practices.

• Paper is made from a renewable resource – trees from sustainably managed forests.
• With a recovery rate of 66% in the U.S. and 70% in Canada, paper is recycled more than any other commodity in North America.
• Most of the energy used to manufacture paper in North America comes from carbon-neutral biomass and other renewable sources.
• The U.S. pulp and paper industry emitted 35.7 Mt of GHG emissions in 2018, which was only 1.2% of total direct U.S. emissions.
• More than 90% of the water used to manufacture paper in North America is cleaned and returned to the source. Most of the remainder evaporates or remains in paper products.
• The North American paper industry has shown continuous environmental performance improvement which is well documented.

Since its inception, Two Sides has been working to end corporate greenwashing of print and paper.  For more information about Two Sides’ Anti-greenwash Campaign, click here.

For more facts on electronic communication and other paper sustainability topics, click here.