When John Downham, president of the Packaging Association of Canada, announces the winners tonight for his organization's first annual Sustainable Packaging Awards, the 100 men and women who work at New Forest Paper Mills in Toronto likely won't be surprised by the results.

“They are certain to take some level of award,” says Mr. Downham. “It may not be first prize, but it will be somewhere up there.”

The reason is simple: New Forest is not only the first paper mill to be built in Canada in 25 years, but it may well be the most ecologically sound.

Not only does New Forest produce new cardboard packaging out of recycled material, but it also does so in a way where little goes to waste and its footprint on the environment is a tiny fraction of traditional paper mills.

“Mayor David Miller says he wants Toronto to be the world's greenest city, yet he was a major supporter when they built that New Forest plant two years ago,” says Mr. Downham. “That should give you an idea just how green its technology is.”

Anyone familiar with the distinctive foul smell of some of Canada's old paper mills may think of “green paper-making” as an oxymoron. But those older mills converted what the industry calls “virgin fibre” – trees – into newsprint, tissue, cardboard boxes and reams of paper for the computer printer on your desk.

About 15 years ago, the industry began to turn to recycled materials, as well as virgin fibre, for its raw materials. Unlike mills that relied on trees, those that depend on recycled paper products needed to be in the city, close to sources of supplies.

“We chose Toronto to build the New Forest mill because it is in the heart of what we call the urban forest,” says John Cherry, president of Atlantic Packaging Products, which owns the mill.

Atlantic now has five mills producing recycled paper – two for linerboard (cardboard), two for tissue and one for newsprint.

“We built our first recycling mill in 1968,” Mr. Cherry says. “But in terms of the technology we use it is probably only two years old; to stay healthy and ahead of the competition you have to focus on constantly improving processes.”

Competition can indeed be fierce and is a major driver in the recycled paper industry's rush to embrace the latest in technology, says David Rossi, Chicago-based managing director of the forest products and building materials industry group at management consulting firm Accenture.

“Mills face things like overcapacity in the market and competition from mills in Asia for recycled boxes and other used paper,” Mr. Rossi notes. “We are at the stage now that we face a shortage of raw materials for all forms of recycled paper. We have gotten so good at it that between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of all paper is now recycled privately or by government.

“Energy and water costs are rising, often dramatically, and then there is the cost of shipping to customers. Cardboard takes up a lot of space and you wind up shipping a lot of air,” Mr. Rossi adds. “The focus has to be on improving processes and taking any steps available to trim costs.”

Customers are unwilling to pay a premium for recycled boxes, says Chris Gleeson, general manager of JIT Industrial Supply & Distribution Ltd., a customer of New Forest.

“There just isn't a great demand from our customers if it will cost more,” Mr. Gleeson explains. “What recycled mills have to do is provide the same strength at the same cost.”

To meet those challenges, New Forest is virtually a closed circle when it comes to production, says Gerry Murray, director of mills for Atlantic Packaging. The mill delivers the two basic components of cardboard boxes – the heavy paper skins and corrugated filler – to industrial customers and then sends its trucks around to pick up the discarded boxes after they have served their purpose.

“In the past, our major market used to be manufacturers, but with the erosion of the manufacturing base over the past couple of years we have switched to the food and beverage industry,” Mr. Murray says. “We do pizza boxes and beer cases instead of containers for auto-parts makers.”

The result: 230,000 tonnes of liner and corrugated medium a year.

The first step, Mr. Murray says, is to soak recycled boxes in water and gently agitate the stew to separate the fibres into long and short strands; heavier contaminants like plastic handles, staples and clumps of clotted short fibres settle to the bottom of the vat. That process is repeated 10 times until the sediment is just tiny particles of fibre, which are removed, dried and sold for other uses (such as cat litter). In the end, the total loss from original material is just 8 per cent by weight, and that is trucked to landfills.

Very little goes to waste, not even the wash water. It is full of starch, a natural food for anaerobic bacteria. New Forest pumps the waste water into tanks and adds those starch-munching micro-organisms; as they digest the starch, they produce methane gas, which the mill captures and burns to fuel its other processes. Methane represents up to 5 per cent of the plant's fuel needs.

“The waste water ends up so pure you can drink it,” Mr. Murray says. “No contaminants are discharged into sewers.”

The resulting long-fibre mass is rolled twice and heated to extract water. But even that water vapour is recaptured and recycled.

“In the past, people would see white smoke coming from paper-mill chimneys and thought it was pollution,” Mr. Murray says. “All it was really was, was water vapour. But we wanted not just to be a green mill but to look like one as well, so we condense the vapour and capture the water.”

The key to all processes is to treat the fibres gently, he adds. Preventing those long fibres from breaking into unusable short ones means extending the usable life of recycled cardboard boxes. “Old processes broke it up,” he says of the fibre treatment. “We don't.”

The end result is products that are every bit as strong and as price-competitive as those from virgin fibre, says Mr. Cherry. There is also the sense among New Forest's staff and customers alike that they are doing their part to preserve the planet.

“[New Forest] just sent me a plaque that says my orders saved 67,800 mature trees last year and eliminated 113 tonnes of solid waste,” says JIT's Mr. Gleeson. “Not only that, but they come and haul away all my waste paper for free. Hard to argue with that.”

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WRAP IT UP THE SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING LEADERSHIP AWARDS

Tonight, the Toronto-based Packaging Association of Canada will issue its Sustainable Packaging Leadership Awards, given in a variety of categories.

Here is a list of finalists in the “Canadian facility or process” sector, from which several winners will be chosen.

Raw Material, Package

Machinery & Ancillary:

• Carton sealing using stitched adhesive beads, Nordson Canada Ltd.

• Greening a service business, Glenn A. Davis & Associates Ltd.

• New Forest Paper Mills LP, Atlantic Packaging Products Ltd./ Mitchel Lincoln

• Spot-Pak packaging, Delkor Systems Inc.

• Strathcona Paper LP, Canampac ULC

Package Converter:

• Eco-Blow, Richards Packaging

• Eden Valley/Farnell Facility, Farnell Packaging Ltd.

• Excel-Pac Facility, Excel-Pac

• Lighting Project, Jones Packaging

• Oxi-biodegradable bubble envelope mailers & protective rolls, Protecpac

• SustainaPAK, Jones Packaging

• Water savings project, Alcan Packaging

Retailer or brand owner:

• Cascades Enviro 100% recycled, Cascades Tissue Group

• Molson Canadian, Ontario, 12-bottle pack, Molson Coors Brewing Co.

• P&G Canada Liquid Laundry Concentration, Palette Public Relations (for P&G)

For a full list of nominees, or more information about the packaging association, go online to: http://www.pac.ca