University of Washington (Ed Draper) Pulp and Paper Foundation

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What does the University Of Washington Pulp and Paper Foundation do? 

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What is the future of paper packaging? 

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Transcript

0:15

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Ed Draper, the Executive Director of Washington Pulp and Paper Foundation. How are you, ed? Doing well. How you doing today? Really good, man. it was great to meet you up at the SPC event and, fellow northwesterners gotta stick together in this world of sustainability. So I was excited to hear about you and your story. if you could tell us a little bit about you specifically, your background, how'd you get into the education world and sustainability world? Yeah. Yeah. So, I grew up over in Aberdeen, Washington. So out on the coast, my dad worked at Weyerhaeuser. He was a forester, then a log scaler. I remember growing up, during the eighties and nineties with my dad and parents both telling me, for the most part, you should stay away from the forest products industry. they were going through a little bit of a downturn at that point, especially, in the logging sector and. And so initially, I felt well, I'm good at math and science, and everyone kept mentioning you should do engineering. I had no idea what an engineer did or, or who they even worked for. but I really did wanna go to University of Washington. back then, Really only looked at one or two schools for colleges. And, looking at what were engineering programs again, given my fi family's finances, public school is the way I was gonna go. So I looked at, Washington State University and University of Washington, and we had a person come by our high school who, told us about this program at the University of Washington. Back then it was called Paper Science and Engineering, and. The big benefit was if you go into this program, you got a scholarship. wow. They said it was a really small program. so typically most people who had pretty good grades would get a scholarship, and it was funded through this foundation called the Washington Pulp and Paper Foundation. And so I, I luckily I accepted the University of Washington, got the scholarship. my thought was I do this for a year. get the scholarship for a year and then go into a real engineering program, like electrical or mechanical, 'cause he took the same, prerequisites. Yeah. And I was really fortunate to get an internship my freshman year. I worked over at a mill called Grace Harbor Paper over in hook Wind, Washington. And I worked there for a summer and just fell in love with the industry. I really enjoyed the people I was working at and operations. I enjoyed the type of work the engineers did and. They got me a hook. I ended up staying with the program. graduated my bachelor's degree in paper science. decided to stick around and got a master's degree in paper science. after graduating my master's, I went to work for Sonoco Products, in Sumner, Washington. So I was a. Process engineer, quality engineer. realized I really enjoyed working with people and doing a mixture of sales and quality and engineering work, which I think quality encapsulated all that together. so eventually became a regional quality manager with Sunoco products, for a number of our paper mills and tubing core plants. And then. Came back to the Mills, a superintendent for two years, and then, was asked to join a startup, that came outta University of Washington called Sustainable Fiber Technologies, which was a group that was taking, agriculture waste and turning that into a wood pulp replacement. So worked with them for about seven years. project manager eventually became the COO of the company. saw a couple startups, including one out in Germany over in Manheim with Ity. And, after a couple years of that, the executive director of the Washington Pul and Paper Foundation retired and, had some people reach out asking if I'd be interested in, potentially coming back to the university and, helping the foundation. So I came back to the University of Washington in November of 2023 and, I've been here ever since. What a great story and what a great, circular. loop that you've made there. and I worked at Warehouser too. okay. Spent five years making boxes. And, that's where I got my nickname, Corygated. And, so that's, I admire that people that worked with their hands and made things. I think that's really important. So I like that you've done that and you've spent that time and your dad did as well. But, so let's talk about this.'cause I love the fact that you get, you have scholarships to offer. Is it still like that? Let's talk about, 'cause students, maybe high school students are listening. They're interested in what should I do next? I just spoke at my son's school to eighth grade kids and a lot of them were thinking, okay, I don't know what my career should be. And I said, oh my goodness. I had no idea to eighth grade, let alone senior and high school, what I was gonna do for a living. So, I think the pressure is on more and more for younger people to decide. and this sounds like a great option. Definitely. it's, it's something that people don't know about. it's funny, I've talked to a lot of students who end up graduating with a chemical engineering degree or material science degree. A lot of times are applying for jobs in the packaging industry and I ended up posting a lot of job, openings here at the University of Washington for these companies. And a lot of times I'll talk to these students who they make the comment like, if I just knew about you guys before I went into chemical engineering to sounded like something more I'd be more interested in. So we're. it always has started out as a niche engineering program. Like we were, like when I took it, when it was paper science, it was really just chemical engineering, but with a bent towards, pulp and paper. And what we've now done is the program's really expanded on what the students learned. So again, they still have that basis of process engineering, chemical engineering, so they learn about heat transfer thermodynamics. Materials transfer, mass transfer and how reactors work and all that stuff. So they still get the basis of that, but they're now also seeing material science and engineering. So they're actually learning about, what are the final products, specifications that customers are asking for. And then now that they have the knowledge of chemical engineering and also a little bit of the biomass portion of it, they can actually understand how does that product actually get. Ity amongst, how can we use the waste from one stream? To another and use that as the raw materials for another. So again, our students will get a little bit of background on, how waste treatment occurs. so again, what we're trying to do is not just, focus on just the process engineering, but they're really trying to expand and look at, material science and engineering, environmental engineering and chemical engineering all rolled up into this program Now. That's incredible. and getting to learn about how the different fibers, behave. is that part of the process? do you actually break down tree pulp and versus bamboo and versus, are you looking at all different kinds of fibers? I. Yeah, they're looking at all sorts of biomass. So our students get exposure to the traditional wood fiber. so hardwood, soft wood, TMP, mechanical pulp versus chemical pulp, craft pulp versus sulfide pulp. And then they also look at recycling. So the impact of recycled fibers and what that can do to your product spec, your product specs. When you add recycled fibers to the mix and also non-wood. So, we look at how can we utilize agriculture waste? So how can we break down wheat, straw, begas hemp, look at all these different types of materials, and what are the type of products you can make out of that?'cause each one will have its own, specific properties for it. We, actually just had a question on our podcast. I do a daily podcast as well, asking what does SBS stand for? And I think one of the words you just said was, sulfide. Can you talk us through what that means and what sulfide pulp is? So, again, my pulping days are years ago now. It's okay. Yeah. But, there's two main chemical pulping processes. what you have is traditional craft pulping. That's the majority of the wood fiber that you see out there. that's where, that's typically what you use for, I would say the vast majority of our paper products come from the craft pulping process. Sulfite is a different process. sulfite can give different properties to the fibers. It's used a lot more for kind of specialty fibers, especially if you're looking at. Diapers, absorbent characteristics or, specialty fiber grades that maybe go into cigarette filters or, things that need a really clean, cellulose, there's, take out most of the hemi cellulose and malignant off of it. That's typically where you'll use that sulfite process. And then what's interesting is the liquor that comes off of the sulfite process that, that craft or the li, the black liquor that comes from the sulfite process can now be used for other products such as vanillin. which could be used for imitation, vanilla, and other materials. So, along with, energy for the plant itself, which is typically what they use for the craft liquor, they'll use that as, energy generation for the plant. So. That's incredible to think about how the material gets broken down and separated into lots of usable things. And, I think oftentimes people don't understand that. I've heard in the wood processing, the bark of the trees gets used as fuel to, fuel the furnace. That will, power the plant, things like that. It is just, I think people don't understand how efficient those processes can be. I think part of it is just because of the economics of this industry. it forces you to have to reuse the materials as much as possible. like within your typical chemical pulp mill, you're doing everything you can to recover those chemicals typically. so you can reuse that for your crop, for your pulping process. like even the raw materials, the chips that's used in your pulping. A lot of times that's, used for, you're getting that material from sawdust or from chips that come from a sawmill. So we're taking the waste streams from the forest products industry and a lot of times that's used now as the raw materials in the pulping process. the liquor, like I mentioned, and we're used for energy uses. that's the big thing is the next generation, right? Is how can we then take waste streams that come from the paper mills. Again, the holy grail right, is how can we utilize that black liquor from a craft pulp mill? Are there ways that we can take that lignin out, and either convert that to either other biofuels or other sorts of bioplastics that from that, that lignin that's there, that's currently being used for energy. So again, it's constantly looking at how can we take the waste from this one stream and turn it into the raw material for a new product. That's how it should be. I think you're doing great work there. And you mentioned in Seattle that you have a lab there. And the lab will, you will accept, you will help companies, packaging companies or brands with their packaging. can you walk us through how that works and maybe who would be a good customer for that? there's a number of, research labs throughout the United States that do some of this work. We're a little bit smaller, compared to the NC States or the Miami of Ohio's or Western Michigan's of the world. But where I think what we fit in is, that next step after doing bench top trials. So let's say. That you're a, consumer products company and you wanna investigate, maybe they're already using a grain for maybe a beverage or something like that. Can we maybe take the waste stream that comes from that grain and maybe use that in packaging? I. So what we could possibly do at the University of Washington is take that waste material, the straw or whatever, and then can we break that down and then see can we create, we can work with the customer, go through different types of pulping processes, find out like what would work best and most efficiently to maybe break that material down. And then we can, create new products on our small, paper machine. Or we've got a thermoformer. So if they wanna do more molded fiber type applications, we can do molded fiber work for 'em. Or, we just have a brand new dynamic sheet form that allows us to make multiply hand sheets for different customers too. So again, we have different capabilities. we're, like I mentioned, we're smaller than some of those other schools out there, but I think we're fit that nice area still where you're still trying to investigate, still trying to, maybe, figure out, we're looking at maybe 20 different raw material sources. We wanna bring it down to maybe three or four that we can then take to some of these larger facilities, but we can meet, do that like the small stuff still. That's awesome. And with the patronization of packaging, as we've heard about, I'm sure you're busier than ever. Yeah, definitely. Like we've had a number of people reach out actually after the SPC impact event. We've had a number of companies, come out to us, ask, we actually were part of the tour, for some of the people at SPC Impact, so we have a few companies come through. Again, didn't know that we existed, that we have these capabilities here. So again, that's what we're trying to do is how can we get our name out there and just show people what our potential capabilities are and see if there's interest. Well, I hope this podcast can help and, I really want, I'd like to promote things like this that are good people like you and your team, doing good things for the environment and for the packaging industry, because there's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of, oh, I don't think paper can do that. Or, that's not something we'd be interested in using because it's not sustainable. Well, actually it is, and here's why. And here's three, three examples. so those kinds of things are really interesting. I did want to ask you, what are some of the misconceptions of paper packaging that you've heard? Yeah, that's interesting. Like I, I hear a lot, especially when we're trying to recruit students into our program, so a lot of the things I'll hear about is why is there even an engineering program, focusing on this. Yeah. it's paper, it's been around for thousands of years. What new things can you add to it? And, and when I talk to students and even people out in, in, in the field who, people out professionals, when you talk about the engineering that goes into a lot of these new packaging designs like. Just think, you mentioned it with the ization, of our packaging and the simple thing of just well, replacing the plastic bags that Amazon currently uses to ship things into the paper bags that you're seeing now, there's a lot of engineering that went behind that, as far as. You got, just thinking about some of the basics of it, like making sure that the product will fit in there and as you put the product in there, that doesn't break apart, but at the same time, it still needs to be easy to open for the customer. once it gets to your doorstep, it has to handle all the transportation, so all the handling that first that occurs in the warehouse and then going, being transported possibly across the country and that last mile delivery, there's lots of handling that's involved there and all that requires certain specifications that makes that Make it where the product doesn't come apart and break has to be easy for the final customer to open it and use it, and also has to be recyclable. So you gotta think about all the chemicals, all the things that are possibly used in that packaging to keep that product safe. All has to be recyclable or potentially compostable. So there's just so much engineering that's involved in this, that even though, again, it's paper, it's something that's been around for a long time. There's so many new things that people are trying to do with it, and each one of these are is a great problem, for young engineers to, to dive into. That's excellent. And you're exactly right. It's the years it took Amazon to do that because it was such a massive shift. plastic packaging, it, it's worked. It's been effective. Yeah. but it's very challenging to recycle. and that's been a major issue, across the world. So there's a huge push for that ization if, where it's, where it makes sense and it's more sustainable and like you said is effective and the consumer can have, has an easy time opening it. That's very important. I did have, and it cost. And the cost too, right? Right. It can't cost three x. It can't. it has to be cost neutral or potentially a savings or just slightly more we can get away with sometimes. I did have a question about trees. I'm often asked about this in my talks, are most trees that are harvested for paper farmed specifically for that purpose? Yeah, I'll start by saying I'm not an expert in this area. a lot of my background's been in recycling for the most part, but it's my understanding that, yeah. most of the trees that are used in, one example here in the northwest is a lot of the chips and sawdust that they use is the residual that comes from other forest product facilities, from sawmills. and those typically come from farmed, tree farms. For the most part. So a lot of this is grown specifically for the purpose of being used in the forced products industry. That's great to hear. And I remember when I worked at w Hauser, every tree that was cut, we would, they would plant 10. Yeah. And that was the ratio and that it's obviously worked for them. they're very successful land management company, or, resource management I think was maybe a better way to say it. but No, that's excellent. appreciate that feedback. So, let's talk about recycling. you mentioned that you're more of an expertise in that field. What can we do to get consumers, to recycle more? one thing would be how do we prevent the confusion around recycling? first off, when you talk recycling with people, the plastics narrative, I feel like has extended over to all materials. Yeah. Not just plastics anymore. So, when you talk about recycling, there's still a lot, there's a number of people out there that now feel like, well. If only, a very small percentage of plastics are recycled, that probably means everything I put in a recycled bin is not recycled. And that's just not true. especially in, So what happens a lot of time is people just feel like that. With paper, they feel like that's not ending up being recycled and being used, whereas a lot of it is being used, like where I worked at Sonoco, we were taking all sorts of recycled material, everything from the converting waste from a corrugated facility to the, we called it mixed waste, that a lot of it came from your curbside recycling and all that would go into our pulper. we'd have different ratios of the amount depending on what grade of paper we were making, but we'd still make usable product that came out of it. now the plastics that would end up in there, the plastics did end up in the landfill. I know there's other people who are trying to utilize that and can we recycle that material? But at least when I was in the industry, given a lot of that did end up in the landfill, but all the fiber would end up again being made in the product. A lot of the metals would be taken out and the metals would be recycled. so again, a lot of that stuff was being used. That's great to hear. and it's, you're exactly right. It's exciting because those, we need those fibers. We need that material to use it again. And the, it really upsets me when people say, oh, recycling doesn't work well, it's not perfect, that's for sure. But, it still works and it's working and it's very successful and it's. It's saving a lot of resources that are virgin resources like trees and, so we need to encourage recycling and encourage, reuse. As well. Well, one thing, one thing that'll be nice is part of it too is just the overall policies we have with recycling. Like you can go from one locale to another locale and what you can recycle is very different from the two. and that does add to the confusion of it. So it'd be nice to see, I think that was one of the new, laws that was passed in the state of Washington was trying to standardize what can be recycled. And I think once you start doing those sorts of standardizations, it makes it easier to go from. town A to go into town B, and that way you know that you can put the same thing in the recycle bin. Exactly. And the Recycling Modernization Act in Oregon is the same. It will standardize across the whole state what can be recycled, every ev, every municipality. And that is a huge undertaking. but it, you're exactly right. That's what needs to happen to make it easy for the consumer. to actually take action and recycle in their blue bin or not in their blue bin. Maybe there's, maybe we need to educate more on specifics of how to recycle, ancillary items that are maybe more difficult to recycle. Yep. So, let's talk about students. Any tips for students graduating high school, coming to UDub? how do they get into the packaging world as a career? Yeah, if students are interested in this and are interested at the University of Washington, they can reach out to me. you know what, we, since we are a really small program still, what we do is I've talked to a number of students, who are interested in engineering, interested in sustainability. I. or also people are just maybe interested in just hands-on, technical engineering. that's what's really nice about this is it really gives you, real world applications of engineering from almost the very first class that you're at here at the University of Washington and Bio Resource Science and Engineering. so the students, we have this lab that we were talking about earlier for many. Tell us about that lab. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So again, we have that, we have a small paper machine. We have a molded fiber, por pilot machine down there as well too. and our students have the opportunity to run that equipment, so as part of their capstone class, that's great. What we could do is, again, we really do stress product development as part of this major. So we'll talk about, we want you to create this type of maybe packaging for Amazon that needs to be shipped to Europe, and. Go and students then will have to think about is there recycling content that's required for it? what type of, if it's mainly being used for, shipments, what type of fiber should we have in there? are there certain chemicals that we can add to it that gives it more strength? do we have other products that we can test against? So again, these students get to learn about how they can do the product design. And then what they didn't do is. Come up with a trial plan on how to run that on the paper machine. And they are the ones who run the paper machine. we do have a lab manager that kind of watches over their shoulder making sure it didn't break anything, but they're really responsible and they get to see whether their trial plan works or not. And it's just, to me, it's just as educational for a trial, not to work as it is for something to work. Great. Because you learn so much either way. Yeah. That's great. What an awesome opportunity. how do people get in touch with you? Email. Yes, they can e they can send me an email. I can provide my email for you that we can attach on this, but, yeah, please send me an email. And what we'll do is, we can set up tours for students. we actually, as part of our two, we'll typically have one of our faculty members meet with a student. so that way they can get like a little bit more details around what's the, what the course load is I can typically give tours around the lab and then talk about career opportunities that the students can possibly have and using the foundation as a way. Of them to make contacts with industry. That's exciting, I think, and the next time I think, I'm coming to Seattle, I'd like to check in with you and maybe take some videos of your lab and show it off a little bit. Yeah, no, we'd love to have you. Great. Well, thanks again, ed. Really appreciate your wisdom here and, your support of the industry. No, thank you. It was great to talk to you.