Cartonifício Valinhos has worried about the environment since its foundation. In a time when no one valued recycling, we innovated producing 100% recycled paper, transforming what was considered garbage in high quality raw material.
Paper and cardboard recycling adds value socially as it generates direct and indirect jobs and encourages the community to exercise their citizenship by teaching the importance of separating their garbage.
By implementing a reverse logistics, it was possible to return disposed materials to our business productive cycle, diminishing the negative environmental impacts, such as the reduction of water and energy use in the production and the decrease of residues sent to landfill sites.
Today, we recycle more than 5,000 tons of waste paper each month: to each ton we recycle, 22 trees are spared, saving 75% of electrical power and reducing air pollution in 74%.
All natural resources have always been very valuable to Cartonifício Valinhos. We were very careful when implementing the effluent treatment station, which does more than the environmental regulations require. We have three stages of depuration: physicochemical, anaerobic and aerobic. In the physicochemical stage, a flotation unit removes all the suspension material in the effluent. The IC anaerobic reactor, from Dutch technology, was the first to be installed in a paper mill in Brazil and is the most modern technology in terms of effluent treatment. It treats high organic loads and is very efficient when removing COD (chemical oxygen demand) and BOD (biochemical oxygen demand). The aerobic stage occurs when microorganisms degrade organic substances. After that, the effluent is forwarded to a decanter zone, where the solids are decanted and the clean and crystalline effluent goes back to the river. We also treat the washing water from the flexographic printers physicochemically.
In 2014, we implemented the biomass boiler. Through renewable fuel, it creates a controlled combustion, which heats the water and generates steam supplied to the whole plant. Because of that, we are able to reduce the carbon dioxide gas emission significantly.
And to guarantee our product quality and its sustainability, Cartonifício Valinhos has a modern lab to research how to reduce chemical products when we manufacture our paper.