PaperChain Chats: Phil Riebel, Sustainable Paper Group
PaperChain Chats | NPTA | June 28, 2021
Corporate giants are increasingly making ambitious climate policies, pledging to slash emissions and become more sustainable in the coming years. Everyone from Google to Estée Lauder has made a pledge. These commitments create ripple effects throughout the supply chain, pushing other firms to become more sustainable themselves if they want to do business with the corporate giants.
“It’s in [suppliers’] best interest to get on board with sustainability and show results,” Phil Riebel, the president of Sustainable Paper Group, tells NPTA’s Lauren Liacouras in the latest PaperChain Chat.
Sustainable Paper Group has a tool that makes it easy for the paper industry to prioritize sustainability: the Environmental Paper Assessment Tool (EPAT). Riebel describes EPAT as a “sustainability scorecard for paper products and paper-based packaging.” EPAT uses more than 25 metrics to measure and examine the environmental footprint of different paper products.
“The paper industry has a wealth of environmental information, but it’s hard to access, and it’s hard to get the same kind of information from all the different suppliers you’re dealing with,” Riebel says. “What EPAT does is it centralizes it into a common database and allows buyers to compare apples to apples.”
With EPAT, buyers have all the sustainability information they need at their fingertips, helping them make more informed purchasing decisions and showcasing the sustainable efforts of companies in the industry. Indeed, suppliers that have long prioritized sustainability could possibly see an uptick in business as a result of using EPAT, as their policies and accomplishments are highlighted to buyers.
Hear more from Riebel in the latest PaperChain Chat. For more information on EPAT, visit epat.org.