Paper, Wood Products Manufacturers Praise Sens. Thune and Manchin, Reps. Olson and Latta for Bill Introductions

The Consumer Goods Forum’s Forest Positive Coalition released their Pulp, Paper and Fibre-based Packaging (PPP) Roadmap earlier this year. The document aims to guide Coalition members in their efforts to remove deforestation and conversion from PPP supply chains. Certification will continue to play an important role in the Coalition’s push to tackle deforestation, forest conversion and degradation, as well as traceability of materials and improved management of forests, and to ensure all stakeholders with an interest in the forest are involved in its management.

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative Inc. (SFI) announced today that Structurlam is the first Canadian manufacturer of cross-laminated timber (CLT) to be certified to the SFI 2015-2019 Chain-of-Custody Standard. Structurlam blends the expertise of wood science with the ingenuity of European fabrication to produce mass timber products including CLT, the next-generation of engineered wood products. Structurlam has manufactured CLT for six years and supplied the product to over 350 projects in North America. Extensively tested, the product has vast applications for construction. “We are excited that Structurlam is the first CLT manufacturer in Canada to be certified to the SFI Chain of Custody Standard. A few months ago I had the opportunity to visit Structurlam’s site and was impressed with their commitment to sustainability and the innovation driving their product development. Many of Structurlam’s suppliers manage forestlands certified to SFI so it is great to know that Structurlam will continue to source and build with SFI certified materials,” said Kathy Abusow, President and CEO of SFI Inc. Click Read More below for more of the story.

Editor’s note: Arbor Day, which falls on April 28 this year, was established in the United States in 1872 as a day to plant and care for trees. To mark the event, Gary M. Scott, chair of the Paper and Bioprocess Engineering Department at SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, answers five questions about the pulp and paper industry – a major consumer of trees. 1. Does paper manufacturing contribute to deforestation? Pulp and paper companies often are accused of cutting down trees to make paper. However, 39 percent of the fiber used for papermaking comes from recycled paper. Most of the remaining wood is obtained either through forest thinning (removing slow-growing or defective trees) or from lumber milling residues – materials that otherwise would go unused. Only 36 percent of timber harvested in the United States is used directly to make paper and paperboard. Each year the amount of wood harvested from U.S. forests is much less than annual forest growth. Land covered by forests in the United States increased by 4.5 percent between 1997 and 2012, even as suburban development expanded. click Read More below for more of the story