| Opening Speaker: Luigi Lazzareschi, CEO, Sofidel Group, Italy |
Business Success and Sustainability in Harmony
Mats Berencreutz, Executive Vice President, SCA, Sweden
The tissue industry’s continuing path towards greater sustainability is a necessary evolution. Even though consumers want to buy green tissue and hygiene products, they don't want to sacrifice product quality or pay a premium price. Today “Green Credentials” mean a license to operate.
Everyday SCA impacts the lives of millions of people and the nature in which we operate. SCA focus on consumer and customer insights, innovations and a never ending hunt for improved efficiency. Besides pleased customers and consumers, improved efficiency across the supply chain will also influence the environmental impact as well as the costs in a positive way. Combined with SCA´s credentials as a sustainable company it gives us the commercial strength to win business. We call it the SCA Sustainability effect. |
The WWF Perspective on Tissue, Forests and Sustainability
Emmanuelle Neyroumande, Pulp and Paper Strategy Manager, WWF International, France
The recently launched WWF “Living Forest Report” chapter on forest products presents future and present challenges and choices that need to be made by society as a whole and the pulp and paper sector in particular, in a world of growing population striving to meet their needs within the planet’s capacity. Whereas some producers and users have taken up the challenge to meet the tissue demand while reducing environmental impact, some are still acting regardless of forest destruction or air and water emissions. The tissue sector is steadily growing, in particular in Asia, and needs to take up responsibility there as well as in more environmentally aware regions. Emmanuelle Neyroumande will present the environmental challenges the Tissue sector faces now and in the future, and will highlight best practices and practices that need to be changed. She will also present the WWF transparency tools that help drive the sector to more environmental consciousness and lowered footprint." |
A Major Retailer’s Viewpoint on Tissue and Sustainability
Florian Schütze, Corporate Social Responsibility Director, Lidl, Germany
The demand for more sustainable products and processes is becoming clearer every day. At Lidl we recognize the importance of sustainability and with our motto “On the way to a better tomorrow,” we are continually striving to improve social and ecological conditions. Our recipe for success: highest quality at a good price.
Moreover, we are focused on working together with recognized labeling schemes such as Fairtrade, UTZ CERTIFIED, Rainforest Alliance, Marine Stewardship Council, the German Blauer Engel, the EU ECO Flower and the Forest Stewardship Council to expand our product range in our own brands such as FAIRGLOBE and BIOTREND. This applies to both “Food” and “Non-Food” products, and we are already well advanced in areas like Fairtrade products, fish sourcing, eggs and palm oil when looking to the German market. With growing awareness by consumers of sustainability and the environment, this trend can only be expected to continue. This presentation at TISSUE WORLD 2013 will cover Lidl’s sustainability practices in general, with a focus on forest products and tissue paper products that are part of our product range. It will show where we are now on these issues, highlight our contributions and demonstrate the choices people can make in their daily shopping towards a more sustainable planet. |
AHOLD’s Sustainability Policy for Pulp and Wood Products and Impact on the Tissue Business
Annemiek Schop, Quality Manager - Non Food, Ahold Europe, Netherlands
AHOLD has the ambition to be a more sustainable retailer, and by 2015 all of its own-brand products should be produced in a more sustainable manner. Among the sustainability issues we are focusing on are:
-climate change
-biodiversity
-exploitation of land and/or water
-social aspects
-animal welfare
-product safety
-waste and packaging reduction
A first step in the AHOLD approach is to focus on a number of sensitive material inputs, with pulp and wood being important ingredients. AHOLD has worked together with WWF on the development of a sustainability policy on pulp and wood. The policy is a guideline for making the right choices when sourcing pulp and wood products and also includes targets towards 2015. The focus of the policy is on the origin of the wood used in these products. Tissue paper is one of the major product categories in this policy and serves as a pioneer for the other products groups in scope of the policy. At Tissue World, we will discuss how AHOLD has developed its forest products sustainability policy and how it impacts the tissue category. |
Integrating Sustainability into the Core of Your Business to Reduce Costs and Strengthen Your Brands
Thomas Bergmark, Senior Advisor & former Sustainability Manager, IKEA Group, Sweden
There is no question that we are today exceeding, by far, the limits of our planet’s capacity to reproduce the resources that we extract and consume every day. Consumers are rapidly becoming more aware of this and many of us already make conscious daily choices to attempt to live a more sustainable life.
Many of the world’s large, progressive retailers are clearly now turning this awareness into new business opportunities, while at the same time, reducing their costs and strengthening their brands. This is accomplished, to a great extent, by integrating “sustainability” into a wide variety of different business functions and processes, rather than running a separate sustainability program as a parallel function.
Other important factors for success with sustainability efforts include the long-term development of credible suppliers, as well as true collaboration with other businesses and NGOs. In this presentation you learn more about ways to turn the reality of constrained resources into exciting business opportunities. |
Trends in Consumer Behavior: Do They Buy Sustainability?
Richard Herbert, Global Business Insight and Development Director, Europanel, UK
Europanel regularly reports on long term trends in the grocery industry based on multi-category household panel datasets covering 13 major economies (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, UK, Russia, Poland, China, Japan, Brazil, Mexico and USA). These datasets integrated with insights into sustainability attitudes and behaviour will consider:
- The impact of inflation and economic events on the grocery business in terms of: value and volume; shopping behaviour such as shopping frequency, basket size and retailer choice; product choice between brands and private labels.
- Emerging and unmet shopper needs.
- Forecasts for the future along with actions that should be taken - based on findings in practice and on work done with academics.
- Comparison and contrast between grocery overall and paper categories; and between countries.
- The role of sustainability - how has this been impacted by all these influences especially with regard to actual purchasing behaviour. |
The World Supply/Demand Outlook for Tissue Products
Esko Uutela, Principal – Tissue, RISI, Germany
The global tissue business is booming. It was hit by the 2009 recession, not as badly as many other paper industry segments, but recovered rapidly and is now back on its strong expansion path. Globally, tissue consumption approached 32 million tonnes in 2012 and first time exceeded the volume of newsprint - a major achievement! We expect the long-term growth to continue at an annual average rate of 4% or slightly above. In the past ten years, China has been the prime motor for growth in the global paper and board industry, and so also in the tissue business, followed by Latin America which has also shown strong expansion. In the next ten years, it is expected that large emerging markets such as Brazil, Turkey and Russia will increasingly offer tissue companies new business opportunities. The tissue sector is expected to continue on its dynamic expansion track with steady growth rates, less dependent on economic fluctuations than other paper grades. The only worrying issue is that being so attractive, investments have been picking up at a rate exceeding the market growth. China has been in the forefront also considering new capacity additions, but there are also other regions where investment activity has been very strong, including Latin America, the Near and Middle East and next year perhaps also North America. |
Comparison of the Hygiene Performance of Paper Towels with Other Hand Drying Methods
Keith Redway, Senior Academic, University of Westminster, UK
Studies at the University of Westminster, London comparing four different hand-drying methods (paper towels, textile towels, warm air dryers and jet air dryers) have shown that towels and jet air dryers are equally efficient at drying the hands, whilst warm air dryers are the least efficient. However, it was shown that jet air dryers did not reduce the average bacterial load on the hands of users but towels did.
Using different test methods, it was also shown that jet air dryers have the potential to disperse contamination on the hands of users over greater distances, at greater heights and in greater amounts than the other hand drying methods. Visualization of the air flows associated with the different hand drying methods was also performed to demonstrate the reasons why jet air dryers perform worse than towels in the transmission of contamination on the hands. In conclusion, jet air dryers were shown to have a poorer hygiene performance than towels in normal use. |
Eurofins-Inlab Study Results: Washroom Surfaces Microbial Contamination with Different Hand Dryer Devices
Roberto Berardi, President, European Tissue Symposium, Italy
150 washrooms in the Ruhr region of Germany, equipped with jet air driers, warm air driers, or hand towel dispensers (50 of each) were selected by Eurofins-Inlab and studied, by measuring the number of microorganisms and potential pathogens on the surfaces most likely to be touched during hand drying. This means the inside surface of jet air driers, the inside or outside surfaces of the outlet tube of warm air driers, and the outlet (bottom) of paper towel dispensers. Also a standard surface area (100 cm2) of the floors below each of the hand drying devices was sampled.
The total microbe counts were significantly higher both on the tested surfaces of jet air driers (approximately 1000 times higher) and on the floors beneath these devices (approximately 20 times higher) in comparison with the surfaces of hand towel dispensers and on the floors, respectively. About half (52%) of the jet air driers and 14% of the warm air drier surfaces were contaminated by coliforms, versus none of the paper hand towel dispensers.
This poses a greater risk of the transfer of potential pathogens that could cause disease in the user. Floors in particular reflect the potential for airborne transmission, including from droplets emitted during hand drying. From the results of this study, it appears that there may be a greater risk of exposure to microbes associated with some types of hand driers. |