Where does it all come from – the paper you print your articles on, for the newspaper, for receipts and brochures? Is it recycled? Is it taken from illegally logged forests?
The November EcoHour focused on sustainable forestry and featured Amy Smith and Lisa Stocker who helped us to answer some of these questions. Amy Smith is the Senior Program Officer with the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Forest and Trade Network-North America (GFTN-NA) program. Amy kicked off her career working in Columbia and Peru, experiencing firsthand the biological and socioeconomic impacts of deforestation and illegal logging. After working with local communities to transform sustainably forested products into high value products, Amy began working more globally on sustainable forest trading systems as a whole with GFTN-NA.
Lisa Stocker is the Sustainable Business Manager at Domtar, a member of the GFTN-NA that works to facilitate Forest Stewardship Council certification for the private landowners who provide the bulk of their fiber. Lisa got her start in forestry as well, managing forest lands as a forester with International Paper. She saw firsthand wood procurement practices, the impact of logging, and the lack of a solid connection between forest practices and manufacturing in the paper industry. Following her work with Rainforest Alliance and communities directly impacted by logging, Lisa came “full circle to engage with consumers and users.”
Tracking paper supplies from forest floor to printing floor is one of the critical steps in creating a sustainable system to better manage our global forests and cut back on illegal logging. Amy works to connect the dots on the supply chain so that companies interested in sustainable forestry can be linked with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified logging operations. From the supplier’s perspective, Lisa emphasized the multiple benefits that Domtar has had since working with GFTN-NA and becoming the first company to have FSC certified land in the Adirondacks. As Lisa stated, it has impacted “our understanding of the global implications of what we do.”
By connecting the dots in the supply chain, and ensuring that a sustainably harvested log gets FSC certification and goes to a company that values FSC certified wood or paper products, a more sustainable and responsible system is created. When you buy FSC certified paper, you can be fairly certain where it came from and the practices that were allowed.
Although as Amy pointed out, “you can wrap around the world 10 times all the logs that are logged illegally,” today ten percent of forests are FSC certified. As Domtar and other companies are discovering, “good forest management is a driver of economic return for communities.”
In other words, a sustainable forest trading system can be sustainable for the environment, but also sustainable financially.