The All-China Environment Federation (ACEF) bestowed the products of the Gold Hong Ye Paper (Suzhou) Industrial Paper Co Ltd, a branch of APP Group, with a high environmental protection honour"China's Environmentally friendly Tissue Papers," last week.

After in-depth investigation and research on all the branch companies of APP in Jiangsu, Yunnan and Hainan provinces as well as the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region this year, ACEF reveals a report on APP's forestry-pulp-paper integrated production.

The report recognized APP's efforts in waste water, gas, dust and solid treatment, water and energy saving, resource and water recycling and emissions reduction and offered suggestions to improve its production.

After strict assessment, the organization decided to give the award to APP's branch Gold Hong Ye Paper (Suzhou) Industrial Paper Co Ltd, which is the first enterprise in China to win the award.

The stringent assessment, lasting for several months, covers a variety of areas such as raw materials, labelling, pulp quality, waste treatment and hygiene quality.

Experts from the ACEF went to the company's production and forestry planting sites to examine whether it adopts national standards in virgin forests, wastewater treatment and emissions.

"The award is to recognize the enterprises' commitment to environmental protection and to cite APP as a good example for the sector," said ACEF deputy secretary-general Li Hengyuan.

Li also said the company has taken the lead in forestry-pulp-paper integrated production, which is strongly promoted by the government in China, due to the recycling use capacity of resources and less pollution performance.

From 2000-10, China's designated forestry area of forestry-pulp-paper production is 1 million hectares, according to the National Development and Reform Commission.

The major polluting sources for papermaking enterprises are bamboo pulp-made paper, for which the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) has widely called for the stopping of the production last month.

Wang Zhibao, vice-chairman of the ACEF and former minister of forestry, said: "Small- and medium-sized paper-making enterprises are major polluters to be blamed in China and need shutting down. To meet the nation's paper needs, only scaled enterprises like APP, which are facilitated with state-of-the-art technologies and have strong capacity to realize recycling production, can protect the environment."

Apart from its advanced production approach, the ACEF's reports showed that APP has attached great importance to environmental protection, especially the Golden Hong Ye Industrial Park in Jiangsu, which is an important reason to win the prize.

According to Jensen Ko, vice-president of APP China Forestry Headquarters, APP pours 30 per cent of its revenue into environmental protection every year and recycling of resources is widely implemented in every process of production.

For example, in APP's Gold Dong (Jiangsu) Paper-making Co Ltd, the recycled use of water has reached 95 per cent.

Its chemical oxygen demand in discharged water only accounts for 6.8 per cent of the national standard.

The waste gas emission treatment has hit 99.7 per cent.

Rising demand

Following the United States, China's tissue paper consumption ranks No 2 in the world, according to Jiang Manxia, secretary-general of the China Tissue Paper Professional Committee.

"But the per capita use of tissue paper only amounts to one-eighth of North America's and one fifth that of Western Europe," she said, "China's tissue paper consumption has entered the fastest developing track, which inevitably causes pollution and harms the ecology."

The expert pointed out that APP's approach serves as a good example for the nation's paper-making enterprises, because China is lacking wood resources, only its forestry-pulp-paper approach could help quench the thirst of rising tissue and help protect the biology.

(China Daily 12/25/2006 page8)