New Green Claims Code Published

The state of the province’s forestry sector is grim unless the McNeil government provides a short extension for the completion of Northern Pulp’s Wastewater Treatment Project. “We are ready and willing to see this project through,” said Kathy Cloutier, Director of Corporate Communications for Paper Excellence Canada. “Without a short extension, thousands of jobs throughout the province are at risk.” “We just need a little bit more time.” The proposed plan would mean untreated wastewater will no longer leave the Northern Pulp site prior to being treated and released into the Northumberland Strait. Click read more below for additional detail.

Two Sides has been busy this year, working on behalf of our members to eliminate anti-paper greenwashing claims, to help educate industry stakeholders on hot environmental topics and to conduct research on consumer attitudes toward our industry and its products. To give you a view of what we’ve been up to, here are some of the highlights. Through 3Q24, Two Sides’ Anti-greenwashing Campaign has persuaded 24 more corporations and other organizations to eliminate anti-paper greenwashing claims, which translates to 100 million more consumers who are no longer seeing misleading environmental claims about paper products from their service providers. We are in conversation with several other large companies right now, and continue to pursue claims as we find them. It’s important to note that Two Sides is the only industry organization that directly challenges the senior leadership of major corporations, government entities, educational institutions and other organizations to remove unsubstantiated and misleading environmental claims about paper products.

Without serious intervention against corruption, it will be impossible to address the problem of illegal timber trafficking in Europe. Presenting its findings in Rome, the TREES project has successfully shed light on the role that bribes play in encouraging the illegal timber trade in Europe. “Corruption is strongly connected to the illegal timber trade, but at the same time appears to be a ‘victimless crime’,” said Antonio Brunori, Secretary General of PEFC Italy, a TREES partner. Identifying corruption It is traditionally very hard to identify corruption, as it is based on an agreement between several parties, all involved with mutual benefits. Moreover, the corruption (at least formally) produces documents that hide the irregularities - when all the documents appear to be legal and correct, it is extremely difficult to detect the crime. “It is vital that we act to minimize this type of criminal activity occurring within the forestry sector, in order to minimize the damage to the environment and the enterprises that work legally,” Mr. Brunori continued. “The findings from the TREES project will provide an important starting point.” click Read More below for additional information