Paper as a circular economy champion

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Take. Make. Waste. This is the essence of a linear economy. But a circular economy is different. Driven by sustainability, in a circular economy products are designed for durability, reuse and recyclability, with materials for new products coming from old ones. Paper and paper packaging fit seamlessly into a circular economy model. In this case, the raw material — woodfibre — is a renewable, natural and sustainable resource that can easily be used again and again.

When people think about the paper industry, they typically think of the people behind the traditional piece of crisp, white A4 copier paper. But the paper and the paper recycling industries are a lot more dynamic than that. Paper manufacturers make the cardboard boxes that your breakfast cereal comes in and the tissues you use to clean up spills on your kitchen counter. As fibre-based products typically contain between 90% and 99% cellulose; these are used in the production of everything from lipsticks and paints to medicines and textiles. 

This makes the paper industry sustainable and renewable says Edith Leeuta, CEO of Fibre Circle, a producer responsibility organisation (PRO) for the paper and paper-packaging sector.  

“There’s a negative misconception about the paper industry, that all we do is chop down trees and cause mass deforestation. But this isn’t the case. The South African forestry industry prides itself on its certification levels, which ensure that we plant and harvest trees responsibly and sustainably,” she says. 

Before heading to a recycling mill, paper is sorted and baled into different grades such as K4, or old corrugated cardboard containers and paper grocery bags. Photo: Mpact Recycling

At any given point in the year, only about 10% of the trees in our farmed forests are being harvested and while this is taking place, more trees are being replanted, Leeuta notes. We need to think about a plantation like we think about a farm; a farm where trees are the crops. Further seeking to debunk this negative perception, she highlights how the forestry industry actually possesses a unique opportunity to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through our trees and store it in the products they produce, such as viscose. Even the timber that is used in construction stores carbon dioxide. All of this has a greater impact if we recycle, adds Leeuta. 

South Africa has a five-year average paper recovery rate of about 70%. At present, the country recycles around 1.15-million tonnes of paper and paper packaging each year, notes Terry van der Walt, commercial and new business development manager at Nampak Liquid Cartons. This makes paper the second-most recovered material in the country. 

While these numbers are promising, there is always room for improvement. Paper and paper packaging still accounts for a large amount of the waste that goes into landfills. This is a reality for various reasons. For starters, says Van der Walt, it comes down to value. Something like a beverage carton doesn’t earn waste pickers — who are a linchpin of the South African recycling economy — as much money as a tin can, for example, so they aren’t recycled as much. Waste pickers have a limited amount of space on their carts, so they need to make sure that whatever is taking up space makes them as much money as possible, says Van der Walt. “This means that the different packaging mediums are in competition with each other for space on these trollies.”

The hope is that this will change with the introduction of the extended producer responsibility (EPR) policy. This legislation puts the onus — be it financial and/or practical — on producers to handle the treatment or disposal of post-consumer products. A portion of the fee that producers are required to pay as part of EPR will be used to subsidise how much waste pickers recover. Used to incentivise them to collect different types of recyclable materials, this subsidy will make it viable for informal collectors to collect different things, because they now can earn more for the items that don’t traditionally fetch as much money. 

According to Van der Walt, the commercially viable side of recycling is crucial to the success of the industry. There’s no value in recycling something if the product you produce can’t be used for something else or if no one wants to use it. Leeuta agrees: “Yes, we need to think about social and environmental impact, but we have to think about how we can use the recycled materials we produce. This means finding markets and different uses for recycled materials.”

Another stumbling block to paper and packaging recycling is that some items might be easy to collect but difficult to recycle, while other items are more complicated to collect but simple to recycle. “A cardboard box or a sheet of white paper is very easy to recycle, but multilayer packaging is harder to process using conventional technologies,” says Leeuta. Collecting paper recycling from an office or home can be difficult because a lot of paper is stored for a period of time or, often, is contaminated. 

“If a plastic or glass bottle has been lying in a bin next to some chicken bones or tea bags, it can still be washed and recycled. You need to remember that paper and paper products are natural products. So, if a cardboard box is sitting in that same bin with the tea bags and chicken bones, this moisture will reduce the quality of the fibres and they will start to degrade. The good fibres are therefore lost,” explains Leeuta. 

Ultimately, one of the best ways to get people to recycle is to make it easier for them to do so. “It’s very difficult to convince people to change their behaviour. Telling people to recycle when there’s a lack of infrastructure to support this behavioural change is a hard sell. You have to make it convenient for them.”

 In addition, it doesn’t make sense to ask people to use alternatives if these alternatives aren’t practical and don’t work effectively. If you’ve ever drank a milkshake with a paper straw, you’ll know exactly what Leeuta is talking about. 

Van der Walt and Leeuta agree that people must educate themselves, particularly around what can and can’t be recycled. They highlight that lack of awareness remains a major contributor to apathy, which is concerning given the fact that separation-at-source by consumers, businesses, schools and other academic institutions is critical to recycling success. Education and awareness, on repeat, supported by infrastructure and investment, are at the heart of improving the local recycling industry, concludes Leeuta. “If we want to build on the 70%, we need to close the gaps between our capacity/ability to recycle and our willingness to do so.”

Sappi is on a major sustainability drive. As part of this, the South African pulp and paper company is looking to maximise how efficiently they use our natural resources and minimise the impact they have on the environment.

According to Sappi’s group head of sustainability and investor relations, Tracy Wessels, Sappi is doing so by using every part of the tree to create paper products and the raw materials needed to create various other products. “When we say we use the whole tree, we mean EVERY part of the tree,” she confirms. Let’s unpack that. 

Tracy Wessels, Sappi’s group head of sustainability and investor relations, says every bit of value is extracted from Sappi’s raw materials.

When Sappi harvests a tree, some parts remain in the forest and ultimately decompose back into the soil. This maintains the quality of the soil within the forest and keeps our forests healthy, she says. Some of the thinner branches, which can’t be used to make downstream products, are collected to be used as biomass to produce green renewable energies. 

Then, continues Wessels, the main part of the tree goes into our value chain to be used as lumber in construction and also to make paper products  such as office paper, newspaper, tissue paper and containerboard packaging. In addition, some of the wood is used to produce what we call dissolving pulp, which goes into the textile value chain. We sell it on to textile manufacturers who use the woodfibre to create viscose fibres, which is used in textiles. “The beauty of this is that these products are biodegradable and they’re made of a bio-based natural and renewable resources so they have less impact on the environment than synthetic materials like polyester, which can take thousands of years to decompose.” 

In the process of making paper and pulp, there are various byproducts or waste products that can be used for other things, explains Wessels. Something called lignin is produced in the making of wood pulp and this can be used in cement in the building and construction industry, for example. Finally, Sappi also produce hemicellulose sugars that are beneficiated into artificial sweeteners like xylitol, and furfural, which can be used in things like ink, fertilisers and adhesives. 

“So, you can see that we really are using all of the tree, even the byproducts,” she concludes. “This is because we understand how important it is to extract every bit of value that we can from the very precious raw materials we find in our forests.”