Forest Management Is Essential To Canadian Packaging Industry BY RACHEL KAGAN Sustainable forest management is essential to the Cana- dian paper packaging industry and its circular economy.
duced with recycled content, the paper fibres it was origi- nally made from came from a tree. However, the Canadian paper packaging industry doesn’t use much in the way of freshly cut trees, and the little that is harvested must be successfully regenerated by Canadian law. The Canadian government conserves and protects its forests through strict laws and science-based sustainable forest management practices, which stipulate that all ar- eas harvested on public land (about 90% of Canada’s for- ests are on public land) must be reforested, either by tree replanting or through natural regeneration (which occurs when new seedlings or sprouts are produced by fallen trees). According to the latest data from Natural Resourc- es Canada’s State of Canada’s Forests Annual Report, in 2020, the total forest harvest for all lumber (which includes market pulp, packaging, tissue, newsprint, and printing and writing paper) represented 0.2% of Canada’s forest land, while 600 million seedlings were planted, up from 440 million in 2018. FACT: Paper packaging is not a major cause of defor- estation in Canada There is also an important distinction between harvest- ing and deforestation. Deforestation is when forest land is permanently cleared and converted to make way for new, non-forest land use. And according to Canada’s National Deforestation CONTINUED ON PAGE 62
Environmental sustainability is at the core of the operations of Paper and Paperboard Packaging Environmen- tal Council (PPEC) member compa- nies, who use recycled content as their primary feedstock in making paper packaging products.
And yet, misconceptions sur- rounding forestry and paper pack- aging persist when it comes to how paper packaging is made. With today’s International Day of Forests, PPEC would like to clear up some of these misconceptions and pro- vide the facts about how Canada’s forests are managed, what is harvested, the causes of deforestation, and how paper packaging is made, and re-made, again and again, through the action of recycling. FACT: The Canadian paper packaging industry does not harvest much of Canada’s forests (and what is har- vested must be regenerated) While most paper packaging made in Canada is pro- Rachel Kagan
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April 8, 2024
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