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:
Huhtamaki is a Tier One member in the newly formed industry alliance called 4evergreen. The members of the alliance come from across the fiber-based packaging value chain, from paper and board producers to packaging converters, brand-owners and retailers, technology and material suppliers and waste collectors, sharing the aim to develop sustainable, circular and functional packaging. The majority of fiber-based packaging is already recyclable but a lot can be done to improve recycling rates. 4evergeen aims to boost recycling rates for example by introducing further standardization for both product design and materials. An important bottleneck today is the collection and recycling infrastructure, and one of the aims of the alliance is to ensure that there is 100% access to collection schemes for wood fiber-based packaging in Europe. The alliance also aims to introduce EU-level standards for testing methods related to product recyclability.
Metsä Group has started cooperation with the Finnish 4H Organisation to strengthen young people’s relationship with forests and widen their understanding of forestry and the possibilities it offers. “Metsä Group is an important player in Finnish society. We employ a wide variety of jobs around the country and export products manufactured in Finland to international markets. Finnish forestry operates on a sustainable basis and its future outlook is very bright. The cooperation with the Finnish 4H aims to strengthen young peoples’ understanding of the economical, ecological and social significance of forestry as well as promote the excellent prospects the industry has to offer for the future both in Finland and globally,” says Juha Laine, SVP, Communications, Metsä Group. Click Read More below for additional information.
The brownish water and dead seabeds are gone. This year Iggesund Paperboard, manufacturer of the paperboards Invercote and Incada, can look back on a century’s unique performance record on sustainability. Iggesund Mill opened its first pulp mill in 1916, which was expanded to become an integrated pulp and paperboard mill in 1963.
I’m proud to have the privilege of working for a company whose environmental efforts are characterised by both a long-term approach and a sense of responsibility,” comments Anna Mårtensson, Environmental Managerat Iggesund Paperboard’s Swedish production facility, Iggesund Mill. “Today our environmental impact is almost non-existent compared with the situation just over 50 years ago.”
When Iggesund built its first pulp mill in 1916, environmental legislation did not exist and companies were basically free to release fibre waste and chemicals into the air and water. During the mill’s first 50 years this caused a significant negative effect on the local environment. The first emissions limits were set in 1963, symbolically the same year that biologist Rachel Carson’s famous book about the influence of pesticides on nature, Silent Spring, was published and became the alarm clock that laid the foundation of today’s environmental movement. Click Read More below for additional detail.
