Arctic Paper

Caring for our environment

Water is the most vital element for everything that lives and grows on our planet, it also has an important role in the paper-manufacturing process. These are some actions we undertake to reduce our impact on the waters and their surrounding nature:

The waters of Dalsland. Arctic Paper Håfreströms is located at Lake Nedre Upperudshöljen and the Dalsland Canal, in an area of sensitive, natural beauty. The mill takes responsibility for this by developing production processes that have minimum impact on the local environment. Important investments have been the installation of a new biological purification plant for wastewater and a new system for handling waste products from the paper machines.

The Environmental Centre at our Munkedals mill displays methods of reducing paper production processes’ impact on the environment. Much work and investigation have gone into cleaning and re-using our processed water – and into ensuring the water we put back into nature is fully restored. This is achieved by biological treatment and our Environmental Centre’s exhibition hall is built next to the large ponds that make up the final stage of the purification. As a result of our work the ponds are now home to fish, crayfish and frogs. In fact the water is so clean that you can drink it after just one filtering.

The Gullmar Fjord. At the Munkedal mill, on the Örekil River upstream from the Gullmar Fjord, a number of projects have been undertaken since the sixties to minimise discharges affecting these sensitive waters – important for salmon and other wild species. Our efforts have been focused on developing the paper production processes to use less water and to introduce biochemical cleaning processes. We are now working to reach our objective of a totally closed water system at the mill, and to eliminate all discharges to the Örekil River and the Gullmar Fjord.

The Odra and Warta rivers. For environmental reasons a new heat and power plant fuelled by gas recently opened at our Kostrzyn mill. This is the third power plant in Poland fuelled by nitride gas from local deposits. The electric energy and process steam was previously supplied by an old coal-based plant. Today the Kostrzyn mill is one of the few companies in Poland that has received a full certificate of OHSAS 18001, ISO 14001, ISO 9001 and EMAS.