Mill pulps rivals in awards

Just 10 years ago, nobody would have expected a pulp and paper mill to win environmental plaudits, but SCA Hygiene Australasia's success has knocked old stereotypes squarely on the head.

The group's Kawerau site, which manufactures facial and toilet tissues for the commercial market in New Zealand and Australia, won the Bay of Plenty Sustainable Business Network Sustainable Business of the Year title last week and is now in the running for the network's national awards on November 8.

Operations sustainability manager Dave Cronshaw told The Daily Post this showed just how far the industry, and SCA in particular had come.

"The pulp and paper industry has been vilified for many years, and rightly so many years ago. But that has changed significantly."

Cronshaw said a change of culture and improvements in technology meant sites, such as SCA in Kawerau, could be as sustainable as any other type of business.

And SCA has proved this by setting and achieving reduction targets for water and energy use and waste and emissions production.

"The volume of material we send for recycling is now greater than the volume that goes to landfill."

This has been achieved by looking carefully at packaging and waste products at every step in the site's processes to see what can be returned to suppliers, recycled or used elsewhere.

For the past year, energy to run the boilers has shifted from solely natural gas to a combination of gas and geothermal energy. This has contributed significantly to a 39 per cent-plus reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

"Tuwharetoa has steam and we use it, so it was a no-brainer to work with them to get clean steam from the geothermal fields," said Cronshaw.

He said there was potential to also use geothermal resources for electricity generation.

A global supplier standard is applied to companies doing business with SCA and staff throughout the plant have had input into how to improve the efficiency and sustainability of the overall process.

"We believe in finding practical things that can make a difference."

Staff and the surrounding environment have also come under scrutiny, with initiatives to encourage staff to walk more and use more environmentally friendly transport and the planting of more than 22,000 native trees along the banks of the Tarawera River.