„Paper Is Ahead When It Comes to Recycling“

How did you come to join Koehler Paper?

I've been working in the pulp and paper industry for quite a while now. I really had to read Koehler's press release about the investment in production line 8 three times back then. I was deeply impressed by this courage, foresight and consistency. After my parental time, a new job suited me very well and Koehler was looking for a sustainability manager, so I applied.

What does a “Sustainability Manager” do, exactly?

I coordinate everything that has to do with sustainability within the Koehler Group. My job is not only to determine the impact of our business activities on the environment, but also to ensure we shoulder our social responsibility in the broadest sense: toward our employees, neighbors, customers, and ultimately all stakeholders. I work together with all of our business divisions to make our production processes and products even more sustainable. The concept of sustainability is also integrated into our strategic planning, so I'm involved in that too.

What is the biggest misconception in relation to paper production that you would like to clear up?

As an industry that uses wood as a raw material, we are often accused of destroying forests, when in fact the opposite is true. We attach great importance to obtaining the wood for our pulp in a sustainable manner and with forest conservation in mind; and we can prove this for every bale of pulp we purchase. We buy the majority of our pulp from Latin America, where they are actually planting new forests. Our supplier UPM recently built a new pulp mill in Uruguay that meets extremely high environmental standards, and also monitors the upstream supply chain. The eucalyptus trees that are used as a raw material are planted in the form of little “islands” in the middle of areas of grassland. This has meant that forests have begun to emerge in large areas where there were none before.

Why don't you use more wastepaper instead of purchasing pulp?

At our Greiz mill, we only use wastepaper as a raw material. The wastepaper that we use is of a higher quality, and we obtain it from traders and sorting facilities on the European market. In Germany, there is not enough material available to cover the demand for secondary fibers. In Oberkirch and Kehl, we produce specialty paper such as our flexible packaging paper. The raw materials we use for this need to demonstrate certain properties that only virgin fibers can offer.

What is so special about flexible packaging paper?

Our NexFlex® paper is designed for direct contact with food. Pasta, nuts, chocolate: All of these can now be packaged in paper rather than plastic film. We equip the base paper with various barrier functions to ensure that the pasta remains dry, the nuts stay fresh, and the chocolate retains its flavor. We are particularly proud that the chocolate start-up nucao now packages its chocolate bars in Koehler NexPlus® Advanced paper – I think many others will follow their example.

So why do we still see so many more products packaged in plastic rather than paper in supermarkets?

Unfortunately, we are not getting much support from legislators in this area either: Companies that package their products in paper benefit from significantly lower packaging license fees, at least per kilogram. These fees are intended to cover the cost of collection, sorting, recycling, and disposing of the used packaging. However, the underlying legislation is so vague that our customers often struggle to make the switch to paper. Yet paper packaging can offer enormous benefits. In paper we have a product that is based on renewable raw materials and is actually recycled in practice. Unlike plastic, paper can be recycled over and over again. Packaging legislation should not impede this development, it should encourage it.