PEFC supports the EU’s efforts in fighting climate change and deforestation globally

We’re kicking off Earth Week 2019 on April 22, which is International Earth Day. While we incorporate sustainability into all parts of our business every day, we are excited to have a whole week dedicated to enhancing nature’s gifts and improving life in our communities. Colleagues and, at many sites, their family members and friends will raise sustainability awareness through volunteering, learning and playing in the world around us.

The benefits of wood construction include the material’s lightness and fast construction. The most relevant aspect where climate change is concerned, however, is the unique ability of wood structures to store carbon in themselves for their entire life-cycle. For example, an average Finnish single-family house built from wood stores roughly 30 tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide within its wooden structures. This is equal to the carbon dioxide emissions generated by the average miles driven by one person over a period of 10 years. The biggest growth opportunities of wood use lie in industrial construction, as well as in the construction of additional floors onto existing buildings and renovating them. By increasing the use of wood, we can considerably reduce the consumption of non-renewable natural resources and construction’s carbon dioxide emissions. “Forest industry products play an important role in the mitigation of climate change. Every wood structure stores carbon, some for as long as hundreds of years. We must move from the fossil economy towards a resource-smart bioeconomy, and increasing the volume of wood construction is one of the essential ways of doing this,” says Juha Laine, SVP, Communications of Metsä Group.

This month’s Member Spotlight features Rolland Enterprises Inc. A leading North American producer of uncoated papers, Rolland manufactures papers with up to 100% post-consumer content. With operations in Quebec and Wisconsin, the company’s operations include a paper mill and converting facility, as well as two state-of-the-art facilities that produce premium recycled pulp. Founded in 1882, Rolland’s enduring commitment to quality, innovation and sustainable manufacturing include sustainable sourcing, energy efficiency, water conservation, wastewater treatment technology, recycling of process byproducts and a continuing focus on further reducing its environmental footprint. Rolland uses the life cycle assessment (LCA) process to guide its sustainability improvement objectives and makes the results of its LCAs public, confirming the company’s environmental stewardship to its many stakeholders. For example, an LCA identified a gap in the company’s water consumption which enabled it to improve its water recycling systems. Today, Rolland’s paper mill has a closed-loop system that uses six times less water and recycles the water 30 times. One of the company’s most successful environmental innovations is the use of 93% renewable biogas energy to manufacture products at its paper mill — the only mill in North America to use primarily biogas for energy. An eight-mile-long pipeline feeds the mill with purified methane gas captured at a nearby landfill. This reduces Rolland’s annual CO2 footprint by 70,000 tons or the equivalent of taking 23,400 compact cars off the road for one year.