All papers have two common ingredients; cellulose fibres obtained from wood or recycled from recovered paper, and a small amount of moisture. In addition, some higher-grade papers include pigments such as calcium carbonate or clay which act as fillers or coatings to change the opacity or surface properties of the paper. These pigments are normally fixed using a binder such as starch.
Whilst other substances may be used in a paper mill to assist the process, they don’t make their way into the final product. Specific amounts of ingredients in each paper is given on the paper profiles.
All our mills use what are called the Best Available Techniques to achieve resource efficiency, which means that we use the best technologies and methods of production to ensure our mills are as eco-efficient as possible. We also benchmark our mills' environmental performance against each other and against the best in class in the industry to ensure that we stay ahead and continually improve our performance.
All of our mills operate environmental management systems certified to ISO 14001, and report their environmental performance in annual EMAS Statements. It’s for this reason that Foralis Communication Papers is the world’s largest producer of EU ecolabelled newsprint, graphic and office papers.
Our mills use the minimum amount of energy and water needed to produce our papers. After fibre, energy and water are the other two main resources required to make paper.
If you are interested in knowing more about energy or water use at our mills, why not read our EMAS reports and statements, or download one of the Paper Profiles for our papers.
If you want to learn more about resource use in the paper industry, learn more on Sustainability in the paper industry, or download this guide to papermaking.
Forests store vast quantities of carbon and play a significant role in the world's carbon cycle-as well as in human hopes of mitigating global warming. Old forests store huge quantities of carbon, however, a growing body of evidence shows, that young, fast growing forests play actually a larger role in taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One reason is, that fast growing young trees in newly established forests are able to extract carbon from the air and incorporate it into their biomass more quickly than old trees in mature forests.
Using wood to store the carbon in product cycles, e.g. the paper cycle, is one way to increase this sink. Ultimately, all reforestation programs will only be effective if we simultaneously work to store the bound carbon in product cycles and reduce our emissions from fossil energy.