ProAmpac’s Rocky Mount Facility Receives International Sustainability Carbon Certification

GreenBlue and the American Forest Foundation (AFF) today announced a new partnership to bring together America’s family forest owners and several of the most well-known marketplace brands, including Mars, Incorporated; McDonald’s; Avery Dennison; and Evergreen Packaging. For the first time ever, both ends of the forest products supply chain will connect and take part in a dialogue to explore their respective needs and challenges relative to sustainable forest management. The dialogue, which kicks off this November and lead to a meeting in January, builds on GreenBlue’s Forest Products Working Group efforts to examine the role of forest certification to explore, in partnership with AFF, frameworks for providing assurance that wood from family woodlands is produced sustainably.

Enjoying a cup of coffee or tea on the go can help make our busy lifestyles a little more tolerable. It affords busy parents a moment of nirvana as they rush to deliver kids to school and get to work on time, and provides everyone the option to enjoy their beverage of choice even if they don’t have time to finish it in store. The facts support a compelling case that the makers of paper cups – the paper and wood products industry – have a long commitment to sustainable business practices that protect the environment, spur innovation and advance recycling. The first thing that sets paper cups apart from other cups: They are made from sustainably managed, renewable materials whose cultivation benefits the environment. Paper products, like cups and paper-based packaging, are made with wood fiber from sustainably-managed forests, which is a 100 percent renewable resource. The wood fiber used to make paper products like cups comes from forests that are managed using sustainable management practices. In fact, adhering to such practices is a condition of AF&PA membership. The U.S. currently grows more wood than it harvests, and there are an estimated 20 percent more trees in the U.S. now than in 1970. Click Read More below for additional information.

Though no larger than mustard seeds, the fruit of the Brassica carinata plant carries huge promise for carbon-neutral traffic. The “bio” prefix in biofuels might suggest a straightforward option for mitigating climate change. But cultivating plants as feedstock for biofuels is not entirely unproblematic. Not all methods of crop cultivation are sustainable, or climate friendly. And, moreover, if fields are allocated for cultivating biofuel feedstock, will there be enough land left over for farming food crops to feed the ever-growing global population? These are among many complex issues coming under increased scrutiny as the menace of climate change looms larger. Brassica carinata, however, is a plant that seems perfect for the biofuels industry. The grain is unfit for human consumption, yet it contains oil that is highly suitable as raw material for biofuel. As carinata grows in winter outside the normal planting season, it can be sown in the same fields as summer food crops. However, only 30% of land is currently in productive use during winter with winter.