Eucalyptus makes it possible

Eucalyptus trees are cool. Koalas, who spend their entire lives in the foliage of these green giants, are not the only ones who know this. The fast-growing wood can be used to produce excellent paper.

Our colleague Frederic Starosta is the Team Leader in Production Management at Erbe. Tending to our Repro Center is one of his tasks. It is the place where we print thousands and thousands of instruction manuals and other documents year in, year out that go out to our customers whenever they buy an Erbe product.

Our enterprise uses 3.6 million sheets of paper every year – a total of 17.55 tons, 2.4 million of which are needed for the Repro Center alone. In light of such high volumes, we asked ourselves if there was anything we could do to cover this need in a more sustainable manner. After all, despite the high proportion of recycling paper, production and transport still consume a lot of energy, generating correspondingly high emissions as a result.

For many years, paper manufacturers have relied on wood from forest plantations around the world which primarily cultivate spruce, pine, birch, beech and aspen. After doing a bit of research, Frederic Starosta discovered paper made from eucalyptus as an appealing alternative suited to our needs. The greatest advantage is that 40 percent less pulp is required for manufacturing this type of paper than the amount needed when conventional paper sources are used. The reason is that in comparison to such sources in terms of pulp yield, Eucalyptus provides up to 75 percent more, and this in turn means larger volumes of paper. To put it simply, fewer trees must be felled for the same amount of paper if Eucalyptus globulus is used. Moreover, this resource is quickly renewable since the tall trees can be harvested after a mere ten-year growing period. And the harvested trees even regrow, offering an additional ecological as well as an economic advantage.

Another plus factor is the low weight. Eucalyptus paper weighs less than conventional paper with comparable opacity. Of course this factor also reduces transport costs, the result being less fuel consumption and fewer emissions. The efficient paper by Discovery that is used by our company is one way we contribute to our climate fitness. According to the calculations made by Discovery, use of eucalyptus paper enables our enterprise to achieve a 28 percent saving on wood consumption. This alone is a great effect that benefits the environment. The CO2 emissions for our printing needs are reduced by a whopping 21.7 tons, with this amount equaling the emissions of about a quarter million car kilometers. Paper made of quickly regenerable trees – now that is what I call profitable growth!