Environment. Hand in hand: Paper and environment

Austropapier, the association of the Austrian paper industry, held a press conference upon the appearance of its 1999 report on the environment. The Austrian paper industry takes comprehensive measures to decrease the environmental loading of air, water, soil, and people to a minimum. In the manufacture of paper, water is recycled a number of times. The required process chemicals are tested under the most recent knowledge of their influence on the environment. The specific waste water quantities in paper manufacture are 14 cu m per tonne of paper and 34.3 cu m per tonne of cellulose. Over 88% of waste water is mechanically and biologically cleaned. Most of the residua from paper manufacture can be reused materially and thermally. Only 1.9% is dumped. In 1998, for a total investment of 2.7 billion schillings, 940 million were used for environmental protection. The Austrian paper industry has in the last ten years invested 47.7 billion schillings of which 18.4 billion schillings went to environmental protection. The discussion covers forest certification Europe-wide as coming; certification of Austrian forests as worthwhile also; the goal of the Kyoto conference of 1990 with respect to greenhouse gases; Austria as having complied with the Kyoto goal with the potential for further reduction as minimal; waste paper of top consideration with waste paper use a record 1.7 million tonnes in 1998; every other tonne of Austrian paper as traveling by rail, way above that in Germany, France, and Italy; road trucking of transport as indispensable to the paper industry; the environmental law for operating facilities as an obstacle to investments; and enormous expense of having experts assess the environmental situation of a plant after the new draft of the law comes into effect.