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.
EarthChoice Ambassadors
As part of our caring values, we regularly give to educational initiatives, sustainability programs and efforts to improve the health and wellness of our neighbors. Our EarthChoice Ambassador program further reinforces this concept.
EarthChoice Ambassadors (ECAs) are Domtar employees who volunteer their time and energy to promote sustainable practices that focus on our customers, employees, company, and community. By identifying and sharing innovative manufacturing methods, educating and encouraging sustainable habits, and leading by example, ECAs embody our sustainability message throughout the organization.
Heather Stowe, Domtar’s corporate social responsibility manager and mother of the ECA program, describes the program simply: “All EarthChoice Ambassadors across the company are just that: ambassadors of making and teaching good earth choices. An EarthChoice is any act that benefits the planet or your community.”
Earth Week 2019
This year, during Earth Week 2019, more than two dozen ECA teams in North America and Europe are getting together to make hundreds of EarthChoices at work or at home. Events planned for Earth Week 2019 include:
Planting trees and gardening in community gardens and parks
Holding recycling drives
Hosting lunch-and-learn events focused on debunking agriculture and recycling myths
Providing families in need with resources to grow vegetables at home
Teaching students about papermaking and recycling
Creating a monarch butterfly habitat
Conducting reading events at schools in coordination with First Book
How will you celebrate Earth Week 2019? Will you be collecting rainwater, planting trees or participating in a community clean-up event? Share your EarthChoice by tweeting us at DomtarEveryday.
Learn more about our commitment to sustainability in the communities where we work, live and play:
Tetra Pak has been recognised for leadership in corporate sustainability by global environmental non-profit CDP, securing a place on its prestigious ‘A List’ for the third year running for tackling climate change, as well as acting to protect forests – two of the three environmental themes covered by CDP. With this accolade, Tetra Pak cements its position as the only company in the carton packaging sector to be included in the CDP leadership band for six years in a row. CDP’s annual environmental disclosure and scoring process is widely recognised as the gold standard of corporate environmental transparency. In 2021, over 590 investors with over US$110 trillion in assets and 200 major purchasers with US$5.5 trillion in procurement spend requested companies to disclose data on environmental impacts, risks and opportunities through CDP’s platform. A record-breaking 13,000+ companies responded.
For more than 125 years, IP has championed the sustainable management of natural resources. As part of its commitment to build a better future, IP advances its Vision 2030 goals and targets in order to deliver sustainable outcomes through our businesses. "Guided by Vision 2030, our sustainability framework, IP has continuously worked alongside customers and strategic partners to become a leader in renewable fiber-based solutions and to help facilitate a low carbon, circular economy," said Sophie Beckham, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, International Paper. International Paper reported pursuant to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and also responded to CDP's (Carbon Disclosure Project) Climate Change, Forest and Water Security questionnaires to transparently disclose risks and opportunities in those core areas of sustainability.
Smurfit Kappa has joined forces with the Plastic Soup Foundation to stress the growing need for sustainable packaging. The Plastic Soup Foundation is a Dutch organisation which campaigns for an end to the pollution of the world’s oceans. The term ‘plastic soup’, which first became popular in the late 1990s, refers to the pollution of the oceans by plastic including large pieces and tiny micro-plastic and nano-plastic particles, both floating and sunken. A strong synergy exists between the Plastic Soup Foundation’s mission to stop the plastic soup at the source and Smurfit Kappa’s Better Planet Packaging initiative which aims to address the challenge of packaging waste and litter that ends up in oceans and landfill. Click Read More below for additional detail.