Nippon Paper Group Inc., one of the world's leading paper and pulp industry companies, is doing its bit to help clean up the mess caused by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.
Nippon Paper Group Inc., one of the world's leading paper and pulp industry companies, is doing its bit to help clean up the mess caused by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake.
It said its plant in disaster-stricken Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, has begun accepting debris from wrecked homes in nearby towns battered by the magnitude-9.0 earthquake.
The company said Aug. 22 that it plans to use the waste material as fuel for its boilers.
The paper manufacturer said it expects to sign a contract with the prefectural government by the end of August that will allow it to burn 120,000 tons of debris annually for the foreseeable future.
Towns trucking debris to the plant include Ishinomaki, Higashi-Matsushima and Onagawa, all in Miyagi Prefecture. Ishinomaki needs to dispose of 5.4 million tons of debris, most of timber. It has the largest mountain of quake debris among all municipalities in the prefecture.
The plant, severely damaged by the March 11 tsunami, expects to resume operations in mid-September.
Even so, it was able to light its boilers on Aug. 20 for around-the-clock operations, thereby providing a source of in-house power generation. The maximum 40 megawatts of electricity produced by the plant will be used by Tohoku Electric Power Co. Tohoku Electric started receiving the additional power supply on Aug. 21.
The prefectural government estimates it needs to dispose of 18 million tons of debris. It has set a three-year goal for the task.
The deal with Nippon Paper marks the Miyagi prefectural government's first contract with a private company on the disposal of quake debris since the disaster.
The prefectural government also struck a similar deal with Seihoku Corp., a leading manufacturer of plywood sheets, to accelerate the pace of disposal.