SCA leads the way

As Europe’s largest private forest owner, SCA has always been at the forefront of good environmental practice. Its latest focus has been its carbon footprint and helping its clients address their environmental issues.

For paper manufacturer SCA, adopting environmentally friendly processes is second nature. “Being environmentally friendly has been our standard policy for a long time,” says David Lucas, managing director of SCA, “and as such, we think we are always ahead of the game with this.”

The amount of trees SCA owns covers 2.6 million hectares in Sweden, making it the largest private forest owner in Europe. This requires a great deal of care and responsibility from SCA to manage them in a way that does not cause harm to the environment, as Lucas explains: “We have a responsibility to be environmentally friendly as forests are our most precious asset, so they need to be managed with great care, which we are happy to do.”

Keeping ahead of the latest environmental issues plays a core part of SCA’s strategy, with the focus now on its carbon footprint Between 2005 and 2006, SCA’s Swedish Graphic Sundsvall site has reduced its amount of CO2 emissions from 1,523 to 1,409 tonnes. Lucas is keen to point out that this reduction comes at a time when SCA Graphic Sundsvall’s total production in 2006 was 1,328,000 tonnes, an increase of slightly more than 5% compared to 2005.

Knowing exactly where to measure the company’s footprint is a contentious issue for Lucas. “There is no way of knowing the start and end point to measure carbon emissions,” he says. “Do we measure it from the forest itself, or from production, and does it end with shipping, or continue to each of the places the products eventually end up at?”

Lucas adds that different companies could measure their carbon emissions in different ways, making it impossible to offer useful comparisons. He says that there is a strong need for standardisation, and praises the work of environmental non-governmental organisation, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which SCA works with. WWF has produced a Paper Scorecard Manual, which it says “is designed as a user-friendly tool for paper purchasers to evaluate their footprint on the environment and to channel paper consumption towards alternatives with the least environmental impact.”

The scorecard has seven questions, covering many topics, including CO2 emissions, FSC certification and manufacturing processes. For each question the paper purchaser gives a mark out of a maximum of 10 or 20, giving an overall total of 100. Despite the scorecard still being in its infancy, Lucas hopes it will be adopted as a means of providing standardisation for CO2 emissions and other environmental measurements.

SCA is currently looking into further offsetting its carbon emissions and reducing the amount it produces. Yet as the largest forest owner, Lucas is optimistic that the level of carbon dioxide its trees absorbs not only surpasses the carbon emissions from production and transport of the products that derived from the forests but also the major share of the SCA Group’s other operations, putting the Group a long way towards becoming carbon neutral. The net sequestration of carbon dioxide in SCA’s forests amounts to more than 2.5 million tones per year, many times more than the CO2 emissions from the company’s paper production.

While carbon emissions is the current hot topic for SCA, as for all industries and consumers, taking positive environmental steps is nothing new for SCA. Lucas says that the company has always been an early adopter of accreditations. This started in the early 1990’s with the adoption of a Totally Chlorine Free (TCF) policy for its production of pulp and publication papers, while many other companies were only offering a partial chlorine reduction, Lucas says.

FSC certification was awarded to SCA in 1999, and is renewed every five years, with this last occurring in February 2006. SCA offers many FSC-certified papers, all within the Grapho range. Grapho Cote, Lux and Matt are FSC accredited coated papers suitable for publications, while Grapho Nova, Prestige, Grande, Gravure and Set are FSC Super-calendared papers. SCA also produces FSC newsprint papers called Grapho Crystal, Bright Extra, Bright and News. Along with FSC, SCA has obtained PEFC accreditation for its Austrian site, which recently received FSC Mixed Sources certification for its use of recycled fibre and FSC-certified pulp.

SCA has also achieved ISO 14001 accreditation, which requires an ongoing process from the company. However, SCA prides itself on going beyond the minimum environmental measures. It looks into ways to ensure every aspect of the business is conducted in an environmentally friendly manner.

To ensure that SCA does not create unnecessary pollution through increased transportation, each mill works with the timber and fibre it is closest to, because as Lucas says, it is not worth shipping virgin fibre to the UK site, and shipping UK recycled waste to Sweden; instead it works with the nearest resources. SCA also takes part in a sharing scheme with other forest owners, where they use a competitor’s forest if it is nearer to the mill than the company’s own forest. Other environmentally friendly measures SCA implements include the use of ships with low sulphur fuel, and trucks fitted with catalytic converters.

This environmentally aware attitude has been part of SCA’s business strategy for many years now, with Lucas saying that “for the last 20 years we have ensured that every investment we have made has been environmentally friendly”. This sentiment has also affected SCA’s mills. Lucas explains: “We have few mills and machines compared to others, but we work with a ‘strong mill’ concept, ensuring that our mills are state of the art. There is over-capacity in the market, with older, inefficient and less environmentally friendly mills closing down. In contrast, we do not buy more capacity; instead we ensure that what we do have is the best.”

SCA does not plan to rest on its environmentally friendly laurels, but has put goals in place to further increase its environmental credentials. Between 2005 and 2010, SCA is planning to reduce its water consumption by 15%, along with enhancing the efficiency of its water purification plants at all its sites. It is implementing methods to ensure no fresh fibre comes from controversial sources.

Using as much of the timber as possible is also a key part of SCA’s business plan. It sells wood pellets to the public for burning, which according to SCA is a fast growing market, as the public is getting more environmentally conscious and wanting to “do their bit”, using biofuels instead of non-renewable fossil fuels.

As the public becomes more environmentally aware, it has begun questioning businesses about their environmental practices. It is no longer enough for a company to simply discuss its business results in its annual report; instead it is necessary to highlight its environmental credentials as well.

“Our customers are getting more environmentally pressured,” says Lucas, “their clients are starting to ask them environmental questions, which in turn makes them come to us, as our clients are aware that we have built up a reputation as a leader for environmentally friendliness.”

Lucas adds that while there is no premium for its environmental products, being environmentally aware does place it at the top of many companies’ lists. SCA’s main customers are publishers, which have been keen to work with SCA to become more environmentally friendly, Lucas says. SCA has also found a growth in environmental interest from web-offset printers and retailers. “Anyone with direct consumer contact is becoming interested in the environment,” adds Lucas. Retailers that SCA has worked with include Homebase, helping to produce its magazine on FSC certified stock, Argos and Marks & Spencer.

SCA helps its clients who may be confused about the measures it needs to take to be environmentally friendly. Lucas says: “We give advice to our clients, particularly with FSC, and we can help them go along the right route. We are happy to help them with this and will even provide a training package, sitting with their staff for a day.” According to SCA this has been very popular with customers as it provides added value.

Explaining the surge in interest for environmental matters, Lucas says: “It’s not businesses that are driving this forward, but the public. The young generation is growing up with a more environmentally friendly attitude, so this will ensure that it continues to grow in importance in the future. The current issue is carbon footprint, and I wonder what the next environmental angle will be. Whatever it may be, there is no doubt that SCA will be ahead of the game.”