Choosing sustainably-sourced Hammermill paper is one of the easiest things you or your company can do to observe Earth Day. It may also be one of the most beneficial. Why? Because Hammermill’s entire business model is dependent on keeping Earth’s forests healthy and thriving.
To put it bluntly, you don’t have much of a paper company without trees.
Because paper making is a sustainable business, forests are preserved.
“Why don’t we just go paperless?” you may ask. Of course, as a paper company we’d prefer that didn’t happen, but here’s why going paperless isn’t the answer. Most paper in North America is sourced from privately-owned working forests. The demand for paper provides an economic incentive for these private landowners to grow, harvest and regenerate forests for continuous, sustainable use.
Now imagine the economic incentive to grow trees for paper vanished. What’s to keep landowners from selling their forests to developers or farmers? Counter-intuitive as it may seem, the economics of paper production have created a culture of responsible forest stewardship and sustainable business practices.
Said another way, by using sustainably-sourced paper, you actually encourage and enable the growth of more trees. Which is great news for the earth.
Sustainable forestry and business practices benefit the environment.
A forest is one of nature’s most powerful systems for capturing carbon dioxide, not to mention purifying water and creating diverse plant and animal habitats. More than 1,000 species live in every square kilometer of forestland. And 100 trees can remove 53 tons of CO2 from the air each year.1
Speaking of CO2, from 2010 through 2019, International Paper and the Hammermill brand reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 22%. During that same time period we planted or enhanced 525,000 acres of forest ecosystems. Our goals for 2030 are even more ambitious. They include conserving and restoring one million acres of forestland and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by another 35%.
We’ll wrap things up with this encouraging fact: There are currently 20% more trees in the United States than there were in 1970 — the year Earth Day began. Hammermill is proud to be doing its part. And we invite you to join us.
1 New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
https://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/40243.html
