International Paper is continuing work on its commitment to sustain forests through two new collaborations with the Arbor Day Foundation: the Time for Trees initiative and Community Tree Recovery. As one of 17 founding members of the Arbor Day Foundation's Evergreen Alliance, International Paper is championing the Time for Trees initiative, a commitment to plant 100 million trees in forests and communities worldwide by 2022. The initiative leverages trees as a simple, natural climate solution, improves community resilience and helps preserve clean air and water, healthy food and a livable climate. International Paper has also committed to planting 46,000 trees through the Arbor Day Foundation's Community Tree Recovery program – a public and private partnership aimed at distributing free trees to residents in communities affected by natural disaster. International Paper's support of this program also promotes community resilience, a focus of their community engagement strategy. Click Read More bellow for additional information.

New York won’t enforce it’s recently enacted plastic bag ban for another two months, the state announced this week. Amid an ongoing lawsuit, the state Department of Conservation posted a notice on its website pushing back the enforcement date from April 1 to May 15. While the ban went into effect at the beginning of March, the enforcement was delayed due to a suit brought on by New York businesses who argue they had little time to prepare. The suit is essentially on hold as the courts prioritize cases amid the coronavirus crisis and critics claim the ban is a health risk.

The substantial impact of PEFC on promoting responsible forest management globally and locally, and the close alignment of our activities with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): these are all clear to see in the 2015 PEFC Annual Review ‘Seeing the Bigger Picture’, released today by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), the world's leading forest certification system. This Annual Review captures just a few of our activities and those of our members in 2015, but it already demonstrates that sustainable forest management is much more than just an environmental issue. It equally addresses the social, economic and cultural dimensions of sustainability at the core of the 17 SDGs.