DS Smith turns to agricultural waste to answer paper’s environmental woes

25 Aug 2022 --- DS Smith is trialing a range of new materials, including fibers sourced from agricultural waste, to determine new methods of reducing water loss and production emissions. The trials fall under the company’s £100 million (US$118 million) investment package for circular economy strategies. 

The program will look at the fiber potential and plastic replacement capabilities of several materials to diversify the range of sources it uses for packaging. New materials include daisies, straw, hemp, cocoa shells and seaweed. 

“This is a trial project with a range of materials which will assess their suitability, performance, recyclability and cost,” a DS Smith spokesperson tells PackagingInsights. 

“These trials are aimed at discovering how we can lessen the impact of our own operations, including reducing energy and water and help our customers do the same.” 

Daisies could be a part of paper packaging in the future.Agriwaste 
Agricultural waste is increasingly being looked at as an answer to the environmental issues caused by paper production. Despite many major companies, including DS Smith, enjoying a business boom as the world turns away from plastics – something Innova Market Insights labels the “Fiber-based Frenzy” – paper is in many ways as harmful as fossil fuel-based materials.  

Paper production swallows huge amounts of water and is also highly energy intensive in most countries. The process can contribute to drought, which is a rising problem globally as temperatures increase, and as a result, lead to wildfires.  

Recently, a forestry expert told PackagingInsights that “companies making the necessary shift from plastic but are choosing to replace that with paper packaging are trading one environmental disaster for another.” 

One answer to this problem is using agricultural waste as alternative fiber, which would have no increase in emissions since it requires no additional irrigation. 

“With the strain on the planet more evident than ever, our research has the potential to lessen pressure on forests and protect the planet’s natural resources,” says Thomas Ferge, paper and board development director at DS Smith.

“As well as looking at how we optimize the standard recycled paper fibers that we already use, we’re very excited by the prospect of how other resources such as miscanthus, hemp, agricultural wastes and seaweed could be used in the next generation of packaging solutions.”

Seaweed and cocoa
Part of DS Smith’s new trials will be further research into the use of seaweed, which is already booming throughout the EU, as an alternative material for packaging. 

In the UK, startup company Notpla is successfully piloting various formats of algae-based packages for food deliveries and other uses.  

DS Smith has been trialing such novel materials with research partners. In an innovative pilot program, DS Smith and The Research Institute of Sweden (RISE) explored how the properties of straw and seaweed could potentially work as a packaging product in comparison to more traditional materials, including recycled hardwood and softwood. 

As part of DS Smith’s Now and Next sustainability strategy, the company aims to optimize fiber use for individual supply chains in 100% of its new packaging solutions by 2025 and optimize every fiber for every supply chain by 2030. DS Smith’s fiber optimization work and wider sustainability progress can be found in its latest sustainability report.

By Louis Gore-Langton

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