Sustainability at Sappi

Every part of the tree is used to create paper and other products

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.

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 biobased 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.”

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