Our 2030 responsibility targets are influenced by many factors, among them being the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). When it comes to water, our responsibility targets all relate in some way to wastewater and we believe this is a key area where we can significantly reduce our impact.
Our targets focus on reducing effluent organic load (measured as COD) by 40% and wastewater volume by 30% compared to 2008. We also aim to use 100% recycled nutrients at our wastewater treatment plants by 2030.
To reach these challenging targets, we need to look beyond business as usual, testing ourselves to develop and apply new technologies. A number of trailblazing our sites are already demonstrating what’s possible, providing valuable learnings and exciting opportunities for us to consider as we aim to roll out improvements across our productions in the years to come.
This includes UPM Nordland in Germany and UPM Changshu in China. Already at the top of their class in terms of water withdrawal and COD load, they have been piloting new solutions and technologies that enable water to be recycled back into processes after it’s released from wastewater treatment. Based on the results, UPM Nordland decided in 2018 to invest in a water purification technology that allows the mill to produce pure water from effluent, therefore reducing 20% of freshwater withdrawals.
In the meantime, we are taking bold steps towards our 2030 target to use only recycled nutrients in our wastewater plants, taking process effluents from other industries and using them as biological agents. By removing these nutrients from waste water (both our own and that of others) we are able to reduce local eutrophication.
UPM Rauma is close to achieve this target, and seven other mills have been substituting part of conventional wastewater treatment nutrients with rejects from biogas plants or other industries.
Finally, our long-term vision of Waste Water Treatment Plant is to turn it into a Resource Recovery Plant. We are targeting to capture and recycle nutrients, reuse more and more water, and turn WWTPs from net power consumers into energy neutral or even energy positive service provider. In practice, we need to look at more energy efficient treatment methods and test new water technologies that would allow us to build the water treatment plant of the future.
