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Moorim Paper achieves industry’s first ‘Zero Waste to Landfill’ Gold status
작성일자 2024.03.08
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Amid the global eco-friendly trend, ‘circular economy’ is becoming a hot topic in all industries; Moorim (CEO: Lee Do-Kyun), an integrated pulp, paper, and new materials company, announced on March 7th that it has become the first company in the Korean paper industry to achieve Gold status in the international validation of ‘Zero Waste to Landfill,’ recognizing its highly sophisticated resource circulation system.
UL Solutions, a global leader in the applied safety science, awards Silver (90-94% recycling rate), Gold (95-99%), and Platinum (100%) status through a rigorous audit to evaluate a company’s resource recycling efforts by examining the level of recycling of waste generated during product production. Moorim Paper’s Jinju Plant, a core workplace of Moorim that produces high-quality, high-value-added paper and where an audit has taken place, has received the Gold status for recycling the majority of its waste and is the only paper manufacturer in Korea to receive the said status.
Paper mills and other manufacturing-based factories typically dispose of waste through landfills or incineration, which generate greenhouse gases and have raised environmental concerns. Moorim Paper’s Jinju Plant recognized these issues early on and has been continuously seeking eco-friendly waste disposal methods to practice resource recycling. Through these efforts, since 2014, the plant has been working with recycling companies to recycle waste into raw materials such as land amendments, sawdust, and concrete materials instead of landfills, and water used in the paper production process is filtered and reused instead of being discarded.
In addition, a separate organization dedicated to waste has been established to oversee waste management. Every month the organization checks and manages the amount of waste generated in real time and thoroughly monitors the entire process from waste generation to transportation to recyclers and treatment.
Moorim plans to use the Gold status achieved by Moorim Paper Jinju Plant as a foothold to expand its Zero Waste to Landfill validation to ‘Moorim SP Daegu Plant’ and ‘Moorim P&P Ulsan Plant.’ Both plants are already known in the industry for their outstanding eco-competitiveness, including high waste recycling rates, running factories using environmentally friendly fuels, and producing recycled paper products.
In fact, Moorim P&P is the only company in Korea that produces pulp, the raw material for paper, and converts ‘black liquor,’ a biomass fuel generated during the pulp production process, into renewable energy such as electricity and steam to produce products. Moorim SP, a company specializing in eco-friendly specialty papers, is also leading the way in spreading eco-friendly paper by being the first in the paper industry to replace bunker C oil with liquefied natural gas (LNG), significantly reducing air pollutant emissions, and recently launching ‘resource recycled paper’ made from discarded clothes. The industry expects that if all of these mills receive Gold status or higher, they will earn the unprecedented title of “Triple Zero Waste to Land Validation” and, at the same time, become a model for an advanced environmental management system.
“Our continuous efforts to reduce waste have enabled us to achieve this Gold status,” said Joo Pansik, the head of Moorim Paper Jinju Plant. “We will continue to strengthen various resource recycling activities to reach a 100% waste recycling rate, and take the lead in practicing ESG management values as an industry leader.”