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paperboard as our customers’ packaging mate- rial as well as in the supply chain,” says Anne Uusitalo , Product Safety and Sustainability Director at Metsä Board.
Metsä Board’s experts work to find the best pos- sible paperboard solution for their customers’ needs. They can also calculate carbon footprint and life-cycle impacts for the various packaging options, which helps the customer to choose the most sustainable option. “The sustainability service became part of the Metsä Board 360 Service in the summer of 2022, and became quickly popular. Our customers ap- preciate the real environmental impact infor- mation, which helps them realise how big an ef- fect different packaging options can have,” says Uusitalo. • METSÄ GROUP HAS UPDATED ITS 2030 TARGETS Metsä Group’s forestry targets have a cen- tral focus on safeguarding the biodiversity of forest nature, as well as on mitigating and adapting to climate change. “Our operations are based on renewable wood, so safeguarding natural biodiversity is important to us. We need to safeguard habitats for endangered species and ensure that forests stay healthy and vibrant so that they can effectively bind carbon diox- ide,” says Katja Tuomola , Vice President, Sustainability Management at Metsä Group. Metsä Group will continue to make efforts to increase the diversity of tree species and the amount of decaying wood in forests, promote natural biodiversity through nature management, safeguard the growth conditions of forests through young stand management, increase forests’ car- bon sink growth through fertilisation, and minimise emissions into the atmosphere and water by recommending continuous cover forestry methods for peatlands. Metsä Group’s target is for over 90 per cent of the wood raw material it uses to originate from certified forests by the end of 2030.
How resource efficient raw material is fresh fibre?
Metsä Board’s folding boxboards, food service boards and white kraftliners are made from pure fresh fibre. Thanks to the fresh fibres the paper- board is light but strong. “If you want the same stiffness for paperboard made from recycled fibre as of one made from fresh fibre, you need a significantly higher basis weight for the recycled paperboard. This makes the packaging heavier, and more material for the same packaging is needed. The increased weight also increases the emissions in the supply chain,” says Uusitalo. Paperboard has one of the highest degrees of collection and recycling among packaging mate- rials. In Europe, its recycling rate is 83 per cent, while the recycling rate for plastic packaging is less than half. Although recycling is a positive thing in itself, paperboard made from recycled fibre is not automatically more ecological than fresh fi- bre paperboard. “The environmental impact of paperboard is created by the amount of raw material used for the packaging and the energy used in the produc- tion of the paperboard. The more raw material we use and the more process energy is produced with fossil-based energy sources, the greater the envi- ronmental impact will be.” How does Metsä Board support its customers in choosing packaging solutions? Packaging is needed to protect the product from being wasted or damaged until it has been used by the consumer. Packaging comprises about one to five per cent of a product’s environmental load depending on the product or packaging in ques- tion, and good material choices can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of packaging.
* https://metsiensuomi.fi/in-english/
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