“For forest certification to be affordable and successful in meeting the needs of smallholder bamboo communities, it needs to be risk based, regional, nationally appropriate and internationally recognized,” said Ben Gunneberg, CEO of PEFC International, at the Global Bamboo and Rattan Congress (BARC2018 ). BARC2018“PEFC can provide this.” BARC2018, held recently in Beijing China, brought together stakeholders from around the world to discuss how bamboo and rattan can contribute to South-South cooperation, climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals, among many other issues. Click Read More below for additional information.

Earlier this month, a crew of Alberta Junior Forest Rangers (JFR) made a big contribution to forest health while learning about one of the most challenging jobs in our industry—tree planting. The Fox Creek JFR crew, composed of eight high school students and two leaders, spent a day planting 2000 pine seedlings at the Huestis Demonstration Forest. The tree planting was guided by one of Millar Western’s Woodlands summer interns, Garreth Carey, who is studying Forest Technology at NAIT. Located within Millar Western’s Forest Management Agreement area, the Huestis Demonstration Forest is a few minutes’ drive northwest of Whitecourt. The site includes a seven-kilometre driving loop with interpretive signs, informing visitors about how a forest can offer recreational opportunities, sustain wildlife, and provide resources for wood products, all while continuing to grow and thrive. Huestis is a working forest, containing cutblocks of varying ages that have been successfully reforested in decades past or are currently being regenerated after recent harvest.

Green-minded consumers have long been exhorted to "reduce, re-use, recycle" to cut down on the amount of waste they send to landfills. Now, one company is taking the concept a step further, using a strategy dubbed "pre-cycling" to help e-commerce retailers operate more sustainably and burnish the corporate eco-image. Running a green business used to mean simply choosing recyclable materials for packaging and shipping. However, retailers can gain a bigger return if they consider an item's entire supply chain journey before they pick a packaging solution, according to Sealed Air Corp.