Forest certfication system of Australia and New Zealand submitted for assessment

Last year, McDonald's made headlines after it announced that it would be pulling plastic straws from all of its UK locations and replacing them with paper straws. The decision was praised by politicians and environmentalists. Then-environment secretary Michael Gove said it marked a "significant contribution" to helping the environment and that McDonald's was setting "a fine example to other large businesses." But it turns out these straws are not actually so eco-friendly. In fact, unlike their plastic equivalents, they are completely unrecyclable. "While the materials are recyclable, their current thickness makes it difficult for them to be processed by our waste solution providers, who also help us recycle our paper cups," a McDonald's spokesman told the UK's Press Association news agency.

Our Outside Voice series highlights the perspectives of stakeholders and leaders on important sustainability topics, such as sustainability reporting. On the particulars, we may not always agree. But we believe in hearing and learning from others who offer valuable insights and a different point of view on issues that are important to us all. Mike Wallace, a partner at BrownFlynn, an ERM Group company, is an internationally recognized expert in sustainability with more than 20 years of experience advising corporations, nonprofits and government agencies on sustainability programs. He’s also interim executive director of the Social and Human Capital Coalition, a global collaboration that helps companies recognize, measure and value the importance of people and communities. Previously, he was a director at the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Wallace recently spoke with our Outside Voice team about the evolution of sustainability reporting, new areas of interest for stakeholders and the benefits of transparency to both publicly traded and privately owned companies.

100 tree planters, 60 minutes, over 53,000 seedlings planted. It takes a great team to break a world record and that is what the J.D. Irving, Limited (JDI) crew did near Sussex on May 20th, 2015. The previous Guinness World Record of trees planted in one hour was set in 2012 in India where 40,000 trees were planted.