Time to move the debate on

20 January 2011



Last year saw the arrival of a Parliament with 227 new MPs: a turnover of 35%. This presents an opportunity for fresh thinking on the importance of packaging and UK manufacturing in general.Let’s start with the vital role packaging can play in protecting goods in a consumer society demanding ever greater choice and instant availability. Rather than being fixated on the need to reduce the amount of packaging, we argue that the relevant authorities should turn their attention to food waste that has 10 times the environmental impact of packaging. Packaging minimises waste and damage, and it would be counter-productive to reduce packaging only to find that more waste ensues.As far as the corrugated packaging industry is concerned, we are very proud of our environmental credentials and these are manifested in a number of ways. First, a well-designed corrugated pack can take carbon out of the supply chain: to fill lorries to the brim means fewer lorry journeys. Second, we have already overshot the Government’s environmental targets. More than 80% of corrugated packaging is recycled in the UK and, on average, 76% of every corrugated box consists of recycled fibres. When we do have to bring virgin fibre into the production mix, it commonly comes from small dimension timber and forest thinnings from managed and certified forests – a renewable, sustainable crop. If we look at the wider picture, between 2006-2009, corrugated packaging in Europe has, on average, reduced its carbon footprint by 12%, beating the 10% target set by Courtauld Commitment 2.At our recent lobby event in the House of Commons, MPs recognised that corrugated packaging is playing its full part in the transition to a low carbon economy. Dan Rogerson MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Packaging, said that corrugated packaging is ‘a sector of industry that takes material that people have already used, and turns it back into an incredibly useful product’. We need to get MPs into corrugated factories to see the good work that’s going on.We need to see a manufacturing renaissance in the UK and we should not accept that decline is inevitable. Given the right conditions, manufacturing of all kinds should be able to operate profitably in the UK. New attitudes in the workforce, combined with new technologies, skills and knowledge, means that UK manufacturing can compete internationally on quality, service and price.There is an important role for government to provide more encouragement to home-grown entrepreneurs to start manufacturing businesses; to make it easier for existing manufacturers to do business in the UK; and to increase the amount of effort being put in to attract overseas investors.Now is the time to move the debate on, as we influence the policy issues that will determine the UK’s self-sufficiency in packaging, recycling and papermaking.Good for the planetIn 2010 Smurfit Kappa UK’s Corrugated Division was awarded the first Carbon Trust Standard for a major multi-site packaging company. This was achieved having taken action on climate change by measuring and reducing its carbon footprint by 11%. The Carbon Trust Standard is the world’s first carbon award that requires an organisation to measure, manage and reduce its carbon footprint and actually make real reductions year-on-year. Unlike other award schemes, organisations are rewarded for actions they have taken to cut carbon across their own operations. Smurfit Kappa’s reduction of almost 8,000 tonnes of CO2 carbon emissions in one year represents a saving of 10kg of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) for each tonne of product manufactured or processed at Smurfit Kappa UK’s Corrugated Division.Smurfit Kappa UK further added to its environmental credentials in 2010 by becoming the first UK packaging manufacturer to achieve Chain of Custody (CoC) certification from internationally recognised certification agencies, the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification), for its entire UK corrugated and paper manufacturing capacity.The successful two-year programme of Chain of Custody certification was unusual in that it was the first to take an integrated, company-wide approach. The programme commenced in April 2008, encompassing Smurfit Kappa’s corrugated facilities, including five regional divisions, each twinned with sheet plants, as well as specialist plants for sheet-feeding and paper manufacture.As a producer of paper for use in its own manufacturing of corrugated sheet, Chain of Custody certification is highly important for Smurfit Kappa’s customers in tracking certified material through the paper and board production process - from the forest to the consumer, including all successive stages of processing, transformation, manufacturing and distribution.



Clive Bowers. Clive Bowers

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