The team at our Cedar Springs, Georgia, mill believes not only in being a good neighbor, but also a responsible environmental steward. In fact, the Wildlife Habitat Council recently certified the mill as a Wildlife at Work property, a distinction designed to recognize outstanding habitat management on industrial lands.
Wildlife at Work certifications aren’t easy to come by, but for Cedar Springs, the recognition is well-deserved. The employees working at the nearly 5,000-acre site go out of their way to minimize disruptions to wildlife living in the area. For example, the team has carefully relocated a dozen gopher tortoises over the years to ensure the animals are not harmed when a mill expansion or construction project occurs. Other species the team is working to increase include bluebirds, purple martins, bats, and insect pollinators, and it protects endangered mussels living in the Sawhatchee Creek, which runs through the property. The team is also planning to replant longleaf pine trees on 300 acres of the site, a move which will benefit a multitude of indigenous creatures, including the gopher tortoise.
Cedar Springs joins five other Georgia-Pacific facilities that have earned certification from the Wildlife Habitat Council over the years, including: Green Bay, Wisconsin; Big Island, Virginia; Monticello, Mississippi; New Augusta, Mississippi; and Rincon, Georgia.
Republic of Korea has become the latest country to achieve the PEFC endorsement of its national forest certification system for the first time. “Thanks to the PEFC endorsement of our national system, we expect the sustainable management of forests to become widespread in Korea,” said Gilbon Koo, Representative of Korea Forest Certification Council (KFCC), the body responsible for the development of the national system. “We also look forward to the increased production and export of PEFC-certified products originating from our sustainably managed, PEFC-certified forests.” Click Read More below for additional information.
“Once technologies have been incorporated adeptly into certification systems, we'll begin to see a shift to where certification systems are data brokers for social and environmental performance,” highlighted Wiebke Herding, ON:Subject, during her keynote presentation to the PEFC Stakeholder Dialogue. “Such a future, however, will require a shift in the use of technology and in the organizational purpose. If done well, it will enable more and real-time information about product flows through the supply chain, enable information feedback loops that benefit and add value to all participants, whilst ensuring that confidential data remains confidential.” With Ms. Herding’s forward-looking and provocative keynote address, PEFC’s Stakeholder Dialogue on ‘Making Certification SMART’ got off to a dynamic and enthusiastic start. Click Read More below for additional information.
Bloomberg, Cox Enterprises, Gap Inc., Salesforce, and Workday, with guidance from LevelTen Energy and its renewable energy procurement platform, closed 42.5 megawatts of a 100 megawatt North Carolina solar project by global renewable energy developer, service provider and wholesaler, BayWa r.e. This group of companies, coming together as the Corporate Renewable Energy Aggregation Group, is the first example of companies aggregating similar, relatively small amounts of renewable energy demand to collaboratively enter into a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA), collectively acting as the anchor tenant for a large offsite renewable energy project. The unprecedented coordination between five international businesses lays the groundwork for other corporates to procure renewable energy cooperatively, maximizing value and reducing risk. The five members of the group, with support from the Business Council on Climate Change (BC3) and the Business Renewables Center (BRC), began collaborating in late 2017. Many potential renewable energy purchasers have historically been faced with a key problem: businesses looking to procure smaller energy loads have been unable to contract directly with large offsite renewable energy projects due to limited energy demand. This has so far restricted business’s ability to catalyze the development of new renewable energy projects. To solve this problem, the group evaluated several mechanisms for aggregating smaller amounts of renewable energy demand to afford them the collective buying power that is typically necessary to contract directly with a large offsite renewable energy project. Click read more below for additional detail.