The objective is to provide updated guidelines on the management of plantation forestry in order to minimise the impacts of operations on the physical environment.

The document is simply presented, with each chapter including a general description of the subject matter to inform the reader of the most important issues. This is followed by a statement of intent describing what a forester should aim for. It also highlights a number of measures that can be applied to achieve the desired outcome.

The guidelines are designed to reduce negative impacts through the application of the law, and best management practices that should result in:

• minimised impacts on stream flow through the removal of alien and invasive species from wetland buffer zones and adjoining rivers;
• reduced impacts on biodiversity through the retention or establishment of natural vegetation corridors between timber compartments; and
• reduced impacts on soil from harvested compartments and roads.

They also deal with conservation measures in unplanted areas, the use of fire to maintain biodiversity as well as the legal requirements for firebreaks. Other topics include integrated pest management, the best silvicultural and harvesting methods, road construction and management, non-timber products and the management of staff housing.

The legal requirements pertaining to all activities are included along with a brief discussion of forest and forest product certification.

For further information, please contact the Editorial Committee.

John Scotcher | ForestLore (Pty) Ltd | jscotcher [@] forestlore dot co dot za

Roger Godsmark | Forestry South Africa | forest [@] global dot co dot za

www.forestry.co.za | www.forestryexplained.co.za

The post Environmental Guidelines for Commercial Forestry Plantations available on FSA website first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

These trees are a renewable resource; planted trees will also be the source of a new generation of innovative forest products and derivatives that are essential to develop a low-carbon economy.

With investments in new technologies, many of these products which are already in the research and development phase will move from the Brazilian tree industry’s laboratories into new markets and different sectors, bringing additional benefits to society as a whole.

The importance of trees in supplying a number of products and services is the subject of the infographic “Planted trees and their multiple uses,” which illustrates the production processes of the forest chain, and the products and derivatives of planted trees.

The post Ibá launches infographic on the multiple uses of wood first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

In South Africa, 1.3 million hectares (ha) of pine and eucalyptus trees are sustainably managed for commercial processing into wood and paper products. Through modern science and nanotechnology, wood fibre – cellulose – is used in automobiles, aerospace, defence and even medicine.

While Arbor Week traditionally calls on all South Africans to plant indigenous trees as a practical and symbolic gesture of sustainable environmental management, timber plantations deserve due recognition for the benefits they bring to the economy, society and the environment.

Wood and paper products touch our lives every day and it’s a relationship that often goes unnoticed, unless we were to take those same products away. From furniture, roof trusses and timber poles to books, writing paper, magazines, as well as boxes and packaging in innumerable shapes and sizes.

“When we grasp that trees are farmed for commercial use, we are able to understand the important role they play,” says Forestry South Africa executive director Michael Peter. “Just like any agricultural crop, trees are planted, harvested and replanted to ensure a sustainable supply of wood. And like any crop, plantations have an impact on the environment.”

Such impacts, Peter explains, are offset by the carbon dioxide absorbed and oxygen released by trees, by the employment and development benefits which forestry brings to communities, and by the biodiversity that is conserved by land owners.

In commemoration of Arbor Week and the theme ‘Forests and Water’, Forestry South Africa shares the facts about timber plantations, water, biodiversity and people.

Plantations and water

• Plantations are not irrigated as trees get their water from rainfall. This means that there are none of the high costs associated with delivering water to other users, such as dams, pipelines, pumping stations and water purification plants.
• Plantations also use a small fraction of the fertilisers and herbicides used in other land uses and, as such, negative impacts from these activities on biodiversity and water quality are very low.
• Plantations are one of the most efficient and beneficial water users – both in respect of the timber produced and the associated carbon dioxide sequestered (absorbed) in the process.

• Plantations use both soil and water resources but these can be measured against the returns they provide:

1. Forestry uses just 3% of available water in the country. This is just 5% of the water used by agriculture (62%). (Strategic Overview of Water Sector in South Africa, 2010. Department of Water Affairs)
2. Forestry occupies about 1.2% of the land used for agriculture
3. Plantations and the forest products sub-sector provide 22.5% of jobs in agriculture

• All forests are vital to the Earth’s water supply as they influence how and where rain falls, filtering and cleaning water.

Plantations and biodiversity

• The South African National Biodiversity Institute concluded in a seven-year grasslands programme funded by the Global Environmental Facility that the grasslands managed by plantation growers were the most diverse and best conserved of all land uses in the programme.
• There are more formally protected grasslands and natural forests under management of the plantation industry, than in any other commercial land use sector.
• Some 80% of the land reserved for plantation forestry is certified to the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council. Approximately 25% of this land is not planted to trees and is conserved for biodiversity.
• The Living Planet Report published in 2014 by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London lauded the Mondi Wetlands Project among the four solutions to global wildlife loss.

Plantations and people

• Apart from the 165,000 jobs in forestry, there are an additional 551,000 forestry-related jobs in upstream and downstream sectors (pulp and papermaking, furniture, timber for mining and construction etc).
• Forestry provides other social benefits to about three million people in rural areas: access to education, training, health care, housing, nutrition, transport, infrastructure and business development and support.

Trees – in all forms – are essential to life on our planet. They absorb excess carbon dioxide and pollutant gases, and provide clean air, water and climate regulation. As a renewable resource and a livelihood for many communities, forests are an important part of the solution to meeting global needs for food, fuel, fibre, medicine and other products essential to daily life.

The post Celebrating trees, wood and water this Arbor Week | 4 – 10 September first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

The basic message is short and simple: Recycle this product – whether it be a box, a brochure or a document.

RecyclePaperZA’s primary aim is to reduce the amount of recoverable and recyclable paper that goes into South African landfills every day. It does this by raising awareness around what is recyclable and how to recycle, thereby progressively increasing paper recovery rates from households, businesses and schools.

Progress is being made

RecyclePaperZA reports that in 2015 South Africans recycled more than 1.2 million tonnes of paper – a volume equivalent to 3.6 million cubic metres of landfill space. In support of this very positive trend, RecyclePaperZA has developed a set of graphics that can easily merge into the design of packaging materials, flyers, posters and other printed items to prompt consumers to recycle rather than discard. They are available Adobe Illustrator, EPS and Jpeg formats.

“There are still many people who do not know what is recyclable. By printing these graphics on the very products that need to be separated from wet and non-recyclable waste, we hope that they will add to our awareness efforts,” says operations director Ursula Henneberry.

“Paper is a completely renewable resource, and it is in fact by using paper products that we benefit the environment. This is because paper companies farm trees – as one would a crop of wheat or maize – for the purpose of making paper,” she says.

Why recycling is important

The recycling process itself reduces the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Here’s why: Within its molecular structure, paper contains the carbon which the trees had absorbed from the environment. If paper fibres are recycled – even up to seven times – the carbon remains intact. If paper is discarded into landfills, it degrades and carbon dioxide and methane are released into the atmosphere.

Another big benefit of recycling is job creation – from the people who walk the streets collecting recyclables to bigger companies that employ individuals to collect and sort recyclables. More than 150,000 people have jobs, because trees are farmed and paper products are made and recycled.

The post Recycle this graphics are available for download first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

The words of Greenpeace co-founder Dr Patrick Moore are a good point of departure: “We should be growing more trees and using more wood. If [those] land owners had no market for wood, they would clear the forest away and grow something else they could make money from instead. When you go into a lumber (wood) yard, you are given the impression that by buying wood you are causing the forest to be lost, when in fact what you are doing is sending a signal into the market to plant more trees.”

Given that in South Africa, paper is made from farmed trees, we can easily replace the word ‘wood’ above with paper.

Paper goes beyond common A4 printer paper from which the flawed antidote of “paperless” has emerged.

Paper includes packaging – from the boxes in which computer equipment is protected during shipment to the box that teabags come in; from your morning cereal, to the label on the coffee jar, to the bag of sugar and to the milk carton; from the tissue box to the bag and box that contained your takeaway lunch. It also includes books, magazines and newspapers. And then the important things like toilet paper, facial tissues, paper towel, feminine hygiene and diapers.

I won’t even go into the number of fibre-based, cellulosic innovations that are set to rival fossil-based materials.

Paper saves forests

South African paper products are produced from a renewable resource, in the form of:

• Wood pulp from trees farmed sustainably managed timber plantations (not from the wood of indigenous trees)
• Recycled paper fibre
• Bagasse (byproduct from sugar cane processing)

Just like most industries, paper manufacturing has an impact on the environment, but this is mitigated through the carbon sequestration by plantations, and the release of oxygen; the use of biomass-based renewable energy (derived from by-products of the papermaking process), emission reduction and water recycling initiatives, biodiversity conservation at plantation level as well as the promotion of paper recovery and recycling.

Carbon capture

In papermaking, the timber is chipped, pulped and paper is made and converted into countless products that we connect with all day, every day – in the kitchen and bathroom, at the office, at the supermarket and while travelling.

Through the papermaking process, carbon (from the CO2 absorbed by the trees) remains locked up and out of the atmosphere. And by recycling paper, we keep this carbon locked up. Destined for landfill – a compact, anaerobic environment – paper (mixed with other waste) will degrade and release gases such as methane which is 25 times more potent than CO2.

While there is no doubt that digital technologies offer security, integration, immediacy and convenience, using the mantra of “saving forests” to promote digital means needs to stop. Because it is simply untrue.

The post Using paper saves trees – a South African perspective first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

The video is part of Sappi’s “The Thing About” series narrated by environmental journalist Johan Botha, that shares information about the company’s commitment to People, Planet and Prosperity through conservation and biodiversity management, community initiatives and partnership programmes as well as land and forest stewardship projects.

Dr Dave Everard, Sappi Environmental Manager explains how the company strives for a balance of these “3Ps” to manage the business in such a way that it is financially viable, environmentally sound and socially responsible. Dr Everard says he believes that, “timber, or vegetation biomass is one of the saviours to future sustainable issues of the planet,” and “creating more markets to use timber is a good thing as long as the timber is produced in a responsible way.” As Sappi grows, it continues to find innovative ways to improve yield, and minimise and reuse waste without negatively impacting the people and natural environment through plantation farming.

Sappi’s Ngodwana Energy Biomass Project was recently named a preferred bidder in the South African Department of Energy’s 4th window Renewable Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme. Through this project, Sappi will use locally-supplied biomass to produce energy for the national grid.

For more information on Sappi’s sustainability initiatives, please see the company’s Group Sustainability Report.

Stay tuned to Sappi’s YouTube channel. We’ll let you know about future videos in this series released in the next few months.

The post The Thing About…Earth Day first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

But it is estimated that only 5% of South African households recycle their paper products. So what is the other 95% doing? Unfortunately their paper goes into the refuse bin and off to landfill.

Today a magazine, tomorrow a newspaper

Locally produced paper is made from plantation-grown trees, recycled paper fibre or sugar cane fibre, making recycled paper is a valuable resource in the paper and packaging chain. While 62% of paper is recovered in South Africa, just less than one million tonnes still end up in landfill, degrading with food waste and adding to greenhouse gas levels in the air we breathe.

By recycling paper, the carbon (absorbed as carbon dioxide by the trees) remains ‘locked up’ in the paper and out of the atmosphere for longer.

Sort your rubbish from your recyclables

The first step to paper recycling is getting to know your recyclables.

Get it collected or drop it off

Visit www.mywaste.co.za for collection programmes or drop-off sites in your area. Keep recyclables aside for an informal collector who walks your neighbourhood every week or contract the services of a small recycling business.

The post Got paper? Recycle it. first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Climate change and sustainability are two of the biggest issues facing society today. It is therefore increasingly important for companies to reduce their environmental impact of products and services through their whole life cycle. Companies failing to address environmental performance in product design and development will find it increasingly difficult to compete in the global market.

Download:  Design For Recycling Guide Book

The post Download ‘Design for Recycling’ – a reference guide for the packaging industry first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).