Georgia-Pacific Earns 2009 SFI President's Award
NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 24, 2009
Georgia-Pacific LLC has been recognized for its outstanding efforts in increasing understanding of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI®) fiber sourcing program and how it supports family forest owners across North America.
“The SFI program values the crucial role all forest landowners play in managing our forests, and demonstrates this through our unique fiber sourcing certification,” Kathy Abusow, president and CEO of SFI Inc., said in presenting the SFI President’s award to Georgia-Pacific. “Georgia-Pacific has used a variety of promotional materials to show the many benefits fiber sourcing offers family forest owners and consumers.”
Sixty percent of the fiber in forest products manufactured in the United States comes from the 10 million family-owned forests in the country, and most are not certified. Under SFI fiber sourcing certification, companies like Georgia-Pacific must have an auditable procurement process for fiber they buy from these lands and, among other things, encourage landowners to reforest areas that have been harvested; use best management practices to protect water quality; identify and protect important habitat elements for wildlife, including critically imperiled and imperiled species and communities; and use the services of qualified resource and logging professionals.
“North America depends on family forest owners who are dedicated to responsible forest management,” said Deborah B. Baker, Georgia-Pacific’s vice president - sustainable forestry. “Georgia-Pacific may not own forestlands but we can have a positive influence on thousands of acres through the SFI program - and that’s important to our company, our customers and our nation’s forests.”
Georgia-Pacific conducts extensive SFI outreach, including communicating with its sales and marketing teams about SFI fiber sourcing. Georgia-Pacific also works with its customers, large and small, to promote the SFI fiber sourcing certification. During Earth Month, it worked with Walmart to create special packaging for copy paper that featured information about SFI fiber sourcing certification that is still being used. The company has also produced printed and video materials explaining how SFI fiber sourcing positively impacts the U.S. fiber supply and the health of forests.
About SFI Inc.
SFI Inc. is a 501c(3) non-profit charitable organization, and is solely responsible for maintaining, overseeing and improving the Sustainable Forestry Initiative program (www.sfiprogram.org), which is internationally recognized and among the largest in the world. It is one of the fastest-growing forest certification programs with more than 175 million acres (70 million hectares) of SFI-certified forests across North America. The SFI Standard also includes unique fiber sourcing requirements that promote responsible forest management on all suppliers’ lands and a chain-of-custody certification, which is used to tell buyers how much certified fiber is in a specific product. The SFI forest standard is endorsed by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, a global umbrella organization that has strict requirements for endorsement. SFI Inc. is governed by a three-chamber board of directors representing environmental, social and economic sectors equally.
About Georgia-Pacific LLC
Headquartered at Atlanta, Georgia-Pacific (www.gp.com) is one of the world's leading manufacturers and marketers of tissue, packaging, paper, pulp, and building products and related chemicals. The company employs approximately 45,000 people at about 300 locations in North America, South America and Europe. Georgia-Pacific creates long-term value by using resources efficiently to provide innovative products and solutions that meet the needs of customers and society, while operating in a manner that is environmentally and socially responsible and economically sound.