Customer challenge
Assocarta is the Italian association of pulp, paper and board manufacturing companies, comprising 100+members. The Italian paper mill industry generates yearly over 500.000 tons of “pulper waste” that is incinerated or landfilled: pulper waste is a mixture created as a result of the paper pulping process. When paper is sent to the recycling plant it always contains a certain amount of impurities and non-cellulosic components. These impurities are eliminated during the recycling process; therefore they do not enter the paper recycling circle, but form a mixture made up of different materials (plastic, metal, glass, wood, sand…) which must be disposed of separately.
We were tasked with scouting and developing innovative solutions to reuse or recycle this waste, in order to reduce the environmental impact of waste disposal and the industry as a whole.
Our results
There is currently no available solution to swiftly dispose of the pulper waste in a sustainable way. To address the issue, we needed to chart a new course together with our partners.
We started by analysing what was already available, with an extensive research on the pulper waste treatment in terms both of commercially available solutions and 50+ scientific papers. This analysis was the background for kicking off a research project in partnership with the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), that comprised the identification of potential transformation processes for the waste, extensive lab testing of different options to separate the waste into its components and several combination of waste and other compounds, leading selection of the most promising options for waste treatment and reuse.
As a result of the project, the partner companies are now evaluating an investment in an industrial site based on the identified solution.