Substitution of Materials Is the Future

The “substitution effect” consists of preventing CO2 emissions, moving away from fossil-based materials and couples it with existing data on process emissions.

What does that even mean? To someone who isn't an environmentalist, reading studies and staying up to date on articles such as these can be a tedious process consisting of reading and re-reading countless articles. Let me help you out.

“The substitution effect results show that forests and forest-based products remove a net of 806 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents annually.”

CO2 is removed from the atmosphere in very large quantities and stored in growing forests in photosynthesis. While part of this carbon dioxide eventually circulates back to the atmosphere, another part of this carbon remains within the materials (cellulose, fibre, wood, etc.)

As this material is used (and recycled) to produce forest-based products, CO2 remains stored within it for a longer period of time before re-entering the natural biogenic carbon cycle.

How Does This Influence Food Packaging?

This shows that forest-based products have a very low carbon footprint – for instance in packaging, paperboard is half the carbon footprint of that of plastics and the difference in favour of paperboard is increasing – and they replace fossil-intensive products. This is a win-win for designers and environmentalists, as understanding the impact your material has on the planet helps us create better sustainable products.

To learn more about the study “Climate effect of the forest-based sector in the European Union” visit this website NEW Cepi study on material substitution effect: Choosing forest-based products over fossil materials is good for climate and EU economic recovery – EURACTIV.com