The main principles of Metsä Board’s Environmental Policy are environmental responsibility, energy, water and material efficiency, the promotion of sustainable forestry and requiring environmental and social responsibility from our suppliers. In addition to the Environmental Policy, our operations are guided by Metsä Group’s Sustainability Principles, which comprehensively cover business, economic and social responsibility issues, as well as environmental sustainability.

When defining our opportunities and challenges with regard to sustainability or our competitiveness, we need to also carefully consider global macro trends such as: climate change, the global scarcity of water, deforestation, ever tightening regulations on transportation and waste management, governmental incentives for the use of wood in energy generation, and energy taxation. Our analyses of the future prospects for Metsä Board indicate that our business provides good opportunities, but that there are also some risks requiring active mitigation.

We work actively to minimise and manage all environmental impacts related to our operations. We take a proactive approach to environmental risk management that includes assessing, monitoring and mitigating all the environmental risks related to our partners’ operations as well as our own operations. We manage environmental risks by complying with the limits set in the mills’ environmental permits on factors such as discharges to water, emissions to air, noise, and accidental releases. We also conduct regular environmental risk analyses and audits at our production units.

All Metsä Board’s production units have certified ISO 9001 quality systems and ISO 14001 environmental management systems in place, as well as a PEFC™ and FSC® certified chain of custody system that enables the amount of certified wood in our products to be reliably verified. Our certified quality and environmental systems are integrated with the chain of custody system which allows us to track and control the origin of all the wood we use. In addition, a certified OHSAS 18001 occupational and product safety system is in place at all Metsä Board’s production units.

All our production units have also introduced the certified Energy Efficiency System (EES), which serves as a systematic management tool for reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, and all our units are certified according to the ISO 50 001 Energy management system.

At an operational level, Metsä Board’s production units continuously carry out small scale investment projects designed to upgrade their production facilities and to reduce environmental loads and environmental risks at our mills. These upgrades have focused on making more efficient use of raw materials, water and energy, as well as on reducing emissions.

Water is vital for paperboard manufacturing, because water is needed at every stage of production: water keeps logs fresh; it helps to separate wood fibres for the paperboard production process; and it transports the fibres to different stages of the production process. Water is also needed for cleaning, cooling, and in smaller quantities to create steam for thermal energy production.

However, rather than just using the water, it is recycled – the process water flows through the mill’s systems several times. After the use, the process water is cleaned thoroughly before it is returned back into nature. About half of the water is used for cooling machinery. As the cooling water runs in a separate system there's no need to clean it after use.

Given the need for water in manufacturing, all Metsä Board’s mills have been built alongside lakes and rivers. This safeguards a continuous availability of clean water for our processes. Still, our operations do not prevent or weaken any other parties’ access to water, for example agriculture. The whole Finnish forest industry uses only 0.2% of the available water resources in Finland.

Using the rich water resources responsibly

Metsä Board’s mills are located in the Nordic countries which are, according to World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the world's water richest region. As part of our water risk assessment, all our mills have been evaluated using the Pfister method, and also this water stress index demonstrates that our mills are located in highly water abundant regions.

Nevertheless, we still continuously seek new ways to minimise the use of fresh water in our processes, for instance by recycling our process waters effectively. This minimises our wastewater emissions and saves energy, therefore reducing impacts on the climate. The percentages of recycled and reused water vary from mill to mill, mainly depending on product quality requirements and local water conditions. Our mills have each set their own targets and continuous improvement plans for water use as part of their environmental management systems. Metsä Board has additionally launched a project to calculate the water footprint of our products based on a life cycle assessment.

As an example, Metsä Board’s mill at Simpele, was able to decrease its waste water flow by over 10% during 2017. The main reason for the reduction is a new online water monitoring system which enables efficient separation of clean pump sealing waters from waste waters.

Investment in the new disc filter at Husum paperboard mill in late 2018 will save 30–50 litre water every second and reduce fibre raw material losses by 1000 kg per day. At the same time the investment decreases energy consumption and thus lowers carbon dioxide emissions.

Metsä Board’s sustainable water use is recognised by CDP which has placed our company on the Water A list for four years in a row since 2015.

Water taken from surface waters

In 2018 Metsä Board’s fresh water intake totalled 105.9 million cubic metres. All process water was taken from surface waters such as rivers and lakes. Our process water use per product tonne has decreased by 20% since 2010.

Effective wastewater treatment

Our process waters are carefully cleaned before they are released back into rivers, lakes or the sea. Most of our mills operate their own wastewater purification plants. Furthermore, each mill has its own specific environmental and water permits setting strict limits for pollutant concentrations in released wastewater. 99% of the water used in our production processes is returned back to nearby waterways after careful purification.