Employment in Europe

The industry provides direct employment for around 250,000 people, and indirect employment - through the paper and forest cluster - for a total of 3.5 million people.

The European pulp and paper industry is a vital part of the paper and forest economic cluster that generates an annual turnover of more than EUR 400 billion.

CEPI member countries produce in excess of 90 million tonnes of paper and board each year. The industry is made up of more than 1,260 pulp and paper mills.

See also: www.paperonline.org

Regulations and guidelines for the industry

The IPPC Directive (96/61/EC) is being introduced across Europe to improve environmental protection standards. IPPC stands for Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control. In essence, the IPPC Directive is about minimising pollution from various sources throughout the European Union.

The Directive requires integrated permits to be obtained from various industry sectors including pulp and paper. "Integrated" means that the permits must take into account the whole environmental performance of the plant, i.e. emissions to air, water and land, generation of waste, use of raw materials, energy efficiency, noise, prevention of accidents, risk management, etc.

Together with the IPPC, something called Best Available Techniques (BAT) have been introduced to help give an idea of how industries can improve. In environmental protection law, BAT means the most effective and advanced techniques that can be practically adopted to prevent harmful emissions and other environmental impacts, or reduce them to acceptable limits.

By May 2004 all 25 Member States had fulfilled this basic obligation. In point of fact, in the UK the paper industry was one of the first industrial sectors in the UK to adopt the IPPC.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 911