Tackle Climate Change: Use Wood

Two Sides member, UK printer Seacourt, a European leader in environmental excellence, announces Planet Positive Printing, a pioneering programme to make Seacourt one of the first printers to achieve a net positive impact on the environment. Seacourt, which already has three Queen’s Awards and an EMAS Award for its innovations in sustainability, has now been certified by ClimateCare as having offset its entire operational footprint - plus an extra 10% - to move to 'beyond carbon neutral' in its impact on the environment. “Planet Positive Printing is the future for this industry,” says Seacourt Managing Director Gareth Dinnage. “We have spent decades transforming our business from a resource-intensive, polluting printer to one that has zero impact on the environment. We have taken more actions than anyone else to be environmentally sustainable, now we are going a step further - making the impact of printed communications absolutely net positive.” Click Read More below for additional detail.

Vancouver-based environmental group, Canopy, has launched a global campaign against paper packaging, claiming that three billion trees “disappear into packaging’’ every year leaving “a trail of deforestation, degraded forest systems, threatened species, and an increasingly volatile climate.” Strong words. But are they true? Not as far as Canada is concerned (and probably the US too). For a Vancouver-based group, Canopy is alarmingly ignorant of the packaging facts in Canada. Here’s one. Most of the paper packaging material made by Canadian mills is 100% recycled content! It’s not made (as Canopy claims) with the “habitat of endangered species such as orangutans or caribou.” There’s a lesson here for brand owners everywhere. We commend you for committing to environmental causes. But please, please do not allow yourselves to be publicly embarrassed by lending your names and credibility to the false and misleading claims such as Canopy makes above. Facts do matter.

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. announced that it has become a participant of the United Nations Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate citizenship and sustainability initiative. The company also announced its new sustainability targets through 2025. Key goals include: •Responsibly sourcing materials with sustainable processes or from recycled fibers by 2025, including cotton, polyester, viscose, wool, down and linen •Driving 30 percent water reduction in denim (the company’s highest volume material) production by 2022 •Partnering with its vendor partners on training programs, including human trafficking prevention and health & wellbeing, and capacity building to support the training of 75,000 additional workers by 2022.