Award 'regreens' polluting pulp mills in RI

Award 'regreens' polluting pulp mills in RI

After an eight-year suspension, President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono has revived the company rating program (PROPER) to show
his government's commitment to the environment.

Of 466 chemical-using industries assessed, 5 percent, or 23
businesses, were nominated for the Green award. Two of them were
once polluting pulp and paper mills -- PT Riau Andalan Pulp and
Paper (RAPP) in Riau and PT Tanjung Enim Lestari in South
Sumatra. The Jakarta Post's Ridwan Max Sijabat spoke to RAPP
management in Jakarta recently.

Wherever you go in this planet, pulp and paper mills pollute the
environment. Even companies in Finland and Sweden that have long
applied environmentally friendly technology in the industry,
still have problems minimizing the negative impact of their
waste.

The problem of paper is a classic tug-of-war between the
environment and development. Human beings need a healthy
environment to live in, they also depend on an increasingly
mechanized society, still much of it paper-driven.

Even in this increasingly Internet-based information age,
newspapers still deliver the news and paper continues to store
important data. Women still need paper products for menstruation
and babies still need nappies, while tissues are a normal part of
homes, restaurants and offices. Cardboard also continues to rule
in packaging.

This huge world demand for paper has encouraged industrialists
here to invest in the paper industry at an historically high cost
to the environment.

Since the New Order era, the government has given hundreds of
concessions in millions of hectares of forests in Sumatra,
Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Papua to the industry, making Indonesia
one of the biggest world suppliers of pulp and paper products.
The presence of thousands of pulp and paper mills here has led to
the disappearance of the country's virgin rain forests and helps
fuel widespread illegal logging in conservation parks and other
protected forests.

Asia Pacific Resources International Holding Ltd. (APRIL), a
giant pulp and paper producer, operates two plants in Sumatra
with 70 percent of their products exported to Asia, Europe and
United States. Its two mills are PT Toba Lestari Pulp (TPL) in
Porsea, North Sumatra, and RAPP in Pelalawan, Riau.

RAPP was awarded the Green environmental award, one step below
the gold rate, for its good waste management and its active
participation in conservation activities. The mill located in the
remote Langgam Village in Pelalawan won the award for having
managed the treatment of 50 percent of its toxic waste and gases
as is required by law.

Use of modern technology

Pulp and paper mills produce a large number of kinds of
pollutants grouped into solid waste, water waste and gases that
can harm the environment.

The two mills produce 90 tons of sludge, 40 tons of screen
rejects, 50 tons of dreg grits and 120 tons of boiler ash a day,
all of which must be treated to prevent them from polluting the
environment.

Learning from the experience of its foreign company partners
in Finland and Sweden, RAPP has developed modern technology to
recycle its sludge and screen-reject particles. Sludge is now
processed to become fertilizer or burned in power boilers to
yield fuel, while screen-reject particles are recycled to make
secondary paper or processed in pin digesters to yield pulp.
Boiler ash, meanwhile, is recycled to make concrete bricks used
to harden road networks in rural areas in the province.

To manage dreg grits, the company has established a four-
hectare landfill equipped with leak-detection pipes to store the
hazardous solid waste. The establishment of a landfill that could
store dreg grits for at least 10 years was required by the
Environmental Management Board's Decree No. 4/1995 on the
treatment of toxic solid waste.

The mill also operates modern facilities to treat its toxic
wastewater before it is channeled into the Kampar River flowing
through the Pelalawan regency. The wastewater treatment
facilities have the capacity to treat almost 500,000 cubic meters
of waste a day, while the mill produces only 330,000 cubic
meters. All wastewater goes through nine processor basins and
towers until it is neutralized with the required pH, or acidity
level of 7.

The wastewater treatment plant is in compliance with
Ministerial Decree No. 51/1995 on the permissible content of
toxic waste and acidity and Government Regulation No. 18/1999 on
toxic and hazardous (B3) waste.

While there is no control mechanism to ensure that the mill
always operates its high-cost wastewater treatment facilities,
company environmental manager Edward Wahab said the effect of
dumping raw waste into the river would be obvious -- and
catastrophic.

"If we dumped the wastewater directly into the river or did
not comply with the required quality of wastewater, all fish in
the river and villagers consuming the river water would die."

The quality of the treated water was now good enough to swim
in, something the firm's employees were already aware of.

"Before entering the river, the treated wastewater now goes
through a pond where our employees can swim and fish," Edward
said.

The mill produces odorous chlorine gas from the use of a toxic
mercury substance in the processing unit, but this is now
incinerated and neutralized before being released into the air.

Edward said all emissions and affluent produced by the mill's
operation were measured to comply with external standards and
were checked regularly once every three months by the government.
The mills are also closely monitored by environmental non-
governmental organizations and educational institutions in the
province.

"The mill is equipped with an extensive system of
electrostatic precipitators that capture and prevent particles
from entering the air. Malodorous gases are collected and
incinerated either in the recovery boiler or in the lime kiln,"
he said.

Sustainability's the buzzword

Sukamto Tanoto, owner of the Raja Garuda Mas Group, a member
of the consortium operating the mill, said the international
market would not buy the company's products if the mills did not
comply with domestic and international environmental requirements
in its operation.

He underlined that the group's integrated pulp and paper mills
were equipped with the best available technology, self-sufficient
in energy generation and benchmarked against the world's best.

Certified ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, and with a capacity of
producing two million tons of paper products a year, the mill has
applied modern technology to produce environmentally friendly
products and no longer uses its old polluting machinery, long
scrapped in developed countries.

However, things weren't always so clean. Edward acknowledges
that the environmental problems caused by the consortium's pulp
and paper mill PT Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL) in North Sumatra during
the New Order era were good lessons for RAPP on how not to run
its operation.

Entering the reform era, there was less chance for polluting
factories to ignore environmental requirements, he said.

"Technology and political commitment, in fact, can harmonize
(economic) development with the environment. Sustainability
allows us to achieve advancements and to minimize waste that
could harm the environment and human life."

TPL, previously known as PT Inti Indorayon Utama, caused
bloody conflict between authorities and locals in North Sumatra
in the 1990s after its activities polluted the environment and
poisoned public health and economic growth.

To show its strong commitment to the environment, the mill
partnered with the Worldwide Fund of Nature has actively
participated in conservation initiatives at the Tesso Nilo
National Park, has rejected the supply of logs from outside of
its concessionaire forests and carried out a community
development program to empower the local economy.

Riau has several vast areas of rain forest that are home to
rich biodiversity, including rare protected animals such as
elephants, Sumatran tigers, rhinos and birds. These animals'
habitats have been under threat because of illegal logging,
poaching and the extensive conversion of forests into palm oil
plantations and farmland.

RAPP public relations manager Troy Pantow said the company had
allocated Rp 32 billion (US$3.2 million) annually to support the
integrated farming system for farmers, provide vocational
training for job-seekers, help small- and medium-scale
enterprises (SME) in the province and finance the community fiber
farm program.

"Besides this, the management has also given priority to
locals to work in the mills and its concession forests, a policy
which is part of the community development program to empower
locals," he said. The company also won an award on Monday from
the Corporate Forum for Community Development (CFCD) for its
community program in Riau.

Troy said the Tanoto Foundation supported by the company had
long given education scholarships to talented students in Riau
and North Sumatra to help improve the quality of human resources
there.