Climate change

ICC case study looks inside a green value chain in Asia

  • 10 July 2014
ICC Biodiversity

How can a business ensure sustainability right across its global value chain, from research and development, through to resourcing, production and the recycling of waste?

This question is tackled in “Sustainable Value Chains”, a publication on the example of two practical cases of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) published today by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) as part of its “Green Economy Roadmap” series.

Greening a pulp and paper value chain

For APP, one step towards a green value chain has been to end the clearing of natural forests across its supply chain in Indonesia. As ICC’s new case study shows, APP’s wide-reaching Sustainability Roadmap Vision 2020 defines such actions throughout its business, from fibre sourcing and climate change, to emissions and water management, protection of indigenous people’s rights, and community empowerment and welfare.

A second example from APP details the water-efficient “Plantation-Pulp-Paper” approach at APP’s Hainan Jinhai Pulp and Paper mills in China, where the world’s largest paper machine digests the equivalent of a truckload of woodchips every minute. The site produces 1.2 million tons of pulp and 900,000 tons of paper each year. The company has invested heavily in pollution-reducing equipment, enabling waste gas, water and solids to be treated, and often reused, onsite. This has saved millions of tons of water, including the 3,500m3 saved daily by collecting, filtering and reusing sealing water for the mill’s pumps. APP reports on average 5 litres of water per kilogram of paper produced, well below the European average of 8 litres for comparable machines.

Aniela Maria, Deputy Director for Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement of APP said: “We developed APP’s Sustainability Roadmap Vision 2020, because we saw the need to step beyond compliance to meet the expectations of our customers and stakeholders around the world. Developing sustainable business operations is a strategic priority for us giving the tremendous potential to be environmentally friendly across our operations while ensuring robust growth and social welfare. Now, we are showing our suppliers, and others, that ‘green’ is good for business too.”

ICC Green Economy Roadmap outlines ten conditions for a “green” economy

Martina Bianchini, Chair of the ICC Green Economy Taskforce said: “APP’s case studies are particularly useful to showcase an overview of greening a whole value chain. This was one of the aims of ICC’s Green Economy Roadmap series, which we compiled with experts from around the world to help businesses, governments and society to understand the “green economy” concept, as well as its practical possibilities and impacts across global value chains.”

The case studies, including the examples from APP, follow ICC’s Ten Conditions for a Transition Toward a Green Economy, where economic growth and environmental responsibility work together in a mutually reinforcing fashion while supporting progress on social development.

Providing a guiding framework for business and government, the Roadmap series highlights a further 59 private-sector undertakings, from recycling cooking oil for transport refrigeration to resourcing efficient manufacturing plants.

With an updated version of the ICC Green Economy Roadmap currently in preparation, the ICC Commission on Environment and Energy and Task Force on Green Economy are working with its business members and experts worldwide to provide input on how to implement and scale up actions towards a “green” circular economy, including towards the United Nations Climate Change negotiations in 2015, and post-2015/Sustainable Development Goals discussions.

Read the ICC Green Economy Roadmap – Sustainable Value Chains – Examples of Asia Pulp & Paper.

Learn more about the ICC Commission on Environment and Energy.