UPM creates value from renewable and recyclable materials by combining the expertise and technologies from fibre-based, energy-related and engineered materials businesses.
UPM has used life cycle impact analysis (LCA) as a guideline in product and process development for the last 15 years. To further increase the sustainability of its products throughout the whole life cycle and value chain, the concept of eco-design has been adopted as the systematic company-wide approach in product design.
Eco-design is an approach that takes environmental factors into consideration in the design and development of products and services during their whole lifecycle.
Eco-design strategies are organised in relation to the product life cycle:
• New concept development
• Reduction of material consumption and diversity
• Environmentally-oriented materials selection
• Reduction of environmental impact of production processes
• Distribution optimisation
• Reduction of environmental impact during use
• Extension of useful life
• Waste management optimisation
Adapted from Lafferty, Marstander and Ruud, 2003
UPM is constantly striving to increase the sustainability of its processes and operational performance in order to lower the environmental impact of its products. UPM is also playing a part in sustaining biodiversity. For example, the biodiversity of receiving waters will improve through decreasing the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) load of the mill effluents.
UPM also takes responsibility for its customers’ processes by developing solutions to improve their environmental performance, for example, by following steps 2 to 6 in the Eco-design wheel. Examples of such products are listed in the table in here.
One example of UPM’s eco-designed paper product is UPM Future Multitech Eco copy paper. By reducing the mass per square meter by 10 grams, from 80 to 70 gsm, a 13 % reduction in the distribution fuel consumption is achieved.
Read more about UPM's eco-designed UPM Future Multitech Eco copy paper from here.
Read more about UPM's eco-designed UPM Grada from here.