Rh.Nor

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

A cleaner paper industry

Eucalyptus logs are trucked to the chipping site at the Advance Agro pulp and paper mill in Thatoom, Prachinburi province in Thailand. The logs are cut into even-sized chips before they are cooked into a pulp.

THERE is good reason why calls to reduce, reuse and recycle paper resonate so loudly: that sheet of super white office paper reaches your table only with a trail of environmental woes behind it.

Paper production starts wreaking ecological harm right from the source of the raw material itself: trees. Natural forests have been cleared to obtain wood pulp and to make way for vast industrial tree plantations. Such monoculture farms suck the land dry and severely impact biodiversity, land rights and livelihoods.


Pulp and paper mills are among the most polluting industrial plants. At the mill, chipped wood undergoes a lengthy process to be broken down into pulp, bleached, pressed and dried to form jumbo reels of smooth, white paper. The whole production devours lots of water, energy and chemicals, and leaves behind lots of noxious effluent.

Criticisms against the industry now sees newer pulp and paper mills adopting new and cleaner technology.

Advance Agro Public Company’s integrated facility in Thatoom in Prachinburi province, about 120km from Bangkok, houses two pulp mills, two paper mills, a power plant and a seedling nursery within 104ha. The facility started production in 1995 and now produces 600,000 tonnes of pulp and a similar amount of paper annually.

Senior executive vice-president Thirawit Leetavorn says the plant relies on machineries that run on less polluting chemicals and water. He says the pulp bleaching process uses Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) methods and thus is acid- and chlorine-free.

(Fears over emissions of toxic chloroform, dioxin and furan have prompted newer mills to use Totally Chlorine Free (TCF) and ECF processes.)

To avoid straining local water supplies, the company built a 192ha reservoir to harvest rainwater. Water stored during rainy spells, as much as 30 million cu m, is enough to last the facility until the next rainy season. To conserve water at the mills, the pulp washing plant uses wash presses with high pressure to squeeze out water from the wet pulp, which has to undergo several rounds of washing to separate cellulose fibres from dissolved materials and chemicals.

Foul mill effluent is treated to comply with anti-pollution rules, then used to irrigate surrounding tree farms. Leetavorn says an online monitoring system allows the Thai environmental agency to know measurements of pollutants at all times.

Like most new pulp and paper mills in Asia, the Advance Agro facility is energy-independent. Bark and lignin wastes as well as black liquor, a residue of pulp-processing, are burned to generate electricity. This saves the equivalent of 340 million litres of diesel oil annually. Of the 100MW generated annually, 70MW is used to power the facility and the rest is sold to the utility.

Leetavorn points out that the environmental harm caused by different paper-making techniques has been largely ignored in the pricing of paper products.

“The market’s failure to fully reflect the environmental costs in the price of paper has given rise to a wide range of environmentally damaging, but ‘cost effective’ paper-making practices, such as illegal logging and unsound waste disposal.”

Stressing the industry’s needs to responsibly manage its ecological impact, he says paper must be sourced from environmentally sustainable supplies and manufacturers must better manage their resource consumption and carbon emissions.

“Consumers too have a role to play,” he adds, “by understanding where paper comes from and exercising their right to choose paper products which do not adversely impact the environment.”


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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http://www.paperindex.com
http://www.paperpundit.com