Using a natural and renewable resource
On average, a carton is composed of 75% paperboard and ACE members are committed to using wood fibre that is sourced from responsibly-managed forests where trees grow without depletion of natural resources. In this way the wood fibre is a renewable resource.
The trees used to produce the paperboard are mainly those native to the Nordic countries : spruce, pine and birch. They are chosen for the strength and length of their fibres. Eucalyptus might also be used as it too has strong fibres.
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Most of the wood fibre for European beverage cartons originates from Finland and Sweden. The remaining wood fibre comes from Russia, the Baltics, South America and European countries including the Norway, Germany, and in very small amounts, the UK and Denmark.
Continuing forest growth
Using wood fibre from the Nordic forests as a raw material has a positive environmental outcome as forest volume is actually increasing year on year : annual growth exceeds annual cuttings.
- In Sweden, 85m m³ of wood is harvested annually, while the annual growth is around 114m³.
- In Finland, industrial logging is 60m m³ while the annual growth is around 100m m³.
- This means that the volume of the growing stock of forests in Sweden and Finland alone has almost doubled, increasing from 3.5bn m³ in 1950 to 6bn m³ today.
Source: Finnish Forest Research Institute
Thanks to the foresters employing responsible management practices, trees that are harvested are replaced fully, both by the planting of young saplings and through natural regeneration.
Typically three to five new trees are planted in the Swedish and Finnish forests, or grow naturally, for every tree harvested – two to four of these are cut down/harvested after 25 years during clearing and thinning of the forest, and one is left to grow to full maturity at 75 years before being harvested. So, today, only 75% of the annual wood increment is harvested.
All parts of the tree are used
After the tree is harvested, every part of it is used most effectively: the thickest trunks and lower parts of trees are used for construction or furniture timber, the thinner parts (5-15cm) for paper(pulp), and the rest (bark, small branches, sawdust) for bio-energy.
Beverage cartons, which are made from paperboard, only account for a small amount of the tree used. On average one tree can provide wood fibre for around 1,500 one-litre beverage cartons.
Strong traceability criteria
Equally, the paperboard in all beverage cartons produced in Europe by ACE members is traceable to acceptable and legal sources of wood, and the beverage carton manufacturers committed to have this extended globally by 2015.
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Source: 1. Rautiainen, A., et al., Carbon gains and recovery from degradation of forest biomass in European Union during 1990–2005. Forest Ecol. Manage. (2009)