Mondi Syktyvkar successfully completes €135 million power plant upgrade leading to c.4% reduction of CO2 for the entire Mondi Group

ABC News’ recent “Trashed: The Secret Life of Plastic Recycling” investigation isn’t about plastic bags or even plastic packaging, it is about the current U.S. recycling system. Put trackers in any recyclable item today and chances are they may end up in an incinerator or landfill. This should be the intended result, given that these trackers are actually contaminants to the recycling stream and would be filtered out for disposal through most recycling processes. It is also because we have over 20,000 different municipal recycling programs across the country that are based on the value of the materials being collected and recycled. This value changes with market conditions and when it does, some products destined for recycling are diverted to disposal instead. Also, until recently, much of that value was in exporting our recyclables overseas. Because of these foreign markets, governments running the recycling programs here in the U.S. did not invest in the infrastructure needed to manage our own recyclables. When China, the biggest importer of U.S. recyclables, stopped accepting them, the markets collapsed.

Domtar's new Outside Voice series highlights the perspectives of stakeholders and leaders on important sustainability topics. 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. Our first Outside Voice is Tensie Whelan, former president of Rainforest Alliance and current professor at New York University Stern School of Business. She leads NYU’s Center for Sustainable Business. Whelan believes climate change is among the greatest environmental challenges we face, with immediate and future consequences that we cannot ignore. She recently spoke with our Outside Voice team about the work of corporations, governments, activists and individuals that can help or harm efforts to mitigate the effects of rising temperatures. Q. What aspects of climate change concern you most? A. I think climate change creates the biggest threat to humanity to date. It creates the twin problems of reduced access to water and too much water. It brings more frequent extreme weather — flooding and drought — which affects our food sources, our industries and our homes. Click Read More below for additional information.

The two Advice Notes that have been updated are as follows: 1. ADVICE-20-001-12 V2-0 Consequences of Uncontrollable or Non-auditable Risks impacting the Forest Sector at large: The revised version now introduces the option for a continued provision of surveillance and re-certification evaluations by certification bodies for suspended certificate holders if the suspension is not related to performance risks or extraordinary events putting the auditing itself at risk. This allows suspended certificate holders to continue with producing FSC product stock from their pre-suspension input stock, to transition to version 3.1 of FSC-STD-40-004, and to avoid the need for an evaluation prior to lifting the suspension. 2. ADVICE-20-011-14 V1-1 Verification audits for material sold and produced but not dispatched prior to suspension: The Advice Note has been updated to provide for more flexibility as to when the verification audit can be conducted: this audit can now also be conducted after the suspension on the basis of duly considered increased risks that such a later verification entails.