What is the Paper Profile?

The Paper Profile is an environmental product declaration scheme developed and provided by members of the paper industry. In 2001, leading European paper producers joined forces to launch the Paper Profile, a declaration that presents relevant and comparable environmental information for products from different paper manufacturers. One of the reasons for doing this was that the various environmental product declarations used in different countries are based on differing metrics and parameters, which makes it difficult to compare between them. This environmental product declaration makes it easy for paper buyers to compare papers and make informed choices.

How the Paper Profile works

The Paper Profile is a single-page declaration regarding the paper mill’s environmental management system and the environmental impacts of raw material procurement – that is, where the wood comes from and whether it is certified. The Paper Profile also covers a number of environmental parameters, including emissions to water and air.

Emissions to water

The figures in this section describe the amount of chemical oxygen demanding substances (COD), nitrogen, phosphorus and organic compounds containing fluorine, chlorine, bromine or iodine (AOX) emitted for every tonne of paper produced.

Emissions to air

This section presents figures for emissions to air of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide. There is also a section on the composition of the product, outlining the percentage of fresh fibre, recycled fibre, pigments, fillers and binders that makes up the paper.

Solid waste and energy consumption

There are also figures for solid waste sent to landfill and electricity consumption. To ensure that all the paper producers use the same calculation model, a manual explains exactly how the values should be worked out.

Holmen's environmental and climate footprint

Using the Paper Profile, paper buyers can easily compare different paper producers with each other and dig deeper into the environmental areas that they feel are most important to them. The issue of climate change is high on the agenda and many printing firms, publishers and retailers have not only set up targets for their own carbon emissions but are also requiring their suppliers to observe certain standards.

So how does Holmen’s environmental work stack up against the competition? Holmen’s paper mills have ambitious environmental and climate targets. Emissions of both carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide are low. Hallsta paper mill phased out the last of its fossil fuel boilers back in 2014 and now the mill only uses electricity to produce steam for the paper machines, which generates no emissions of carbon dioxide. A certain amount of fuel is burned at Braviken paper mill, but emissions are extremely low. Work continues on reducing the climate footprint of the company’s transport and distribution. However, the focus extends beyond emissions to air. Improvements are being made in all environmental areas. For example, water treatment plants are being restructured to bring emissions to water even lower.

Other ecolabels

The Paper Profile only declares the product’s environmental footprint from production. Those looking for a more comprehensive picture can go further and look at the product’s entire climate footprint. The Carbon Footprint environmental declaration reports the carbon emissions over the entire life cycle of the product. This includes emissions from transport to the paper mill and emissions arising from electricity generation, which the Paper Profile does not address. All of Holmen’s papers also meet the requirements for the EU Ecolabel, FSC® (FSC ID FSC-C020071), PEFC (PEFC/05-33-134) and the Nordic Swan Ecolabel – demonstrating that our papers are among the most climate- and eco-friendly choices you can make.

Follow the quick links to the Paper Profile for all our respective papers here below, or read more about the different Paper Profile parameters here.