Office Depot to offer greener paper

 

“Domtar is proud to supply Office Depot with high-quality, environmentally responsible paper and fully supports its new paper-purchasing policy. Domtar’s commitment to forest certification, and FSC in particular, aligns with Office Depot’s values. We look forward to working together to expand the market for certified paper products.”

The new guidelines – drafted over a 12-month period with input from World Wildlife Fund (WWF), other non-governmental organisations and several paper suppliers – updates the company’s 2004 paper policy. The updated policy has garnered support from a wide range of forest-sector stakeholders. The policy scope includes all paper purchased or sold by Office Depot globally, with initial implementation focused on high-volume categories such as copy paper and marketing papers, and a secondary focus on other paper-based office products and delivery packaging.

“At its core, this new policy is about clarity and implementation,” said Yalmaz Siddiqui, senior directo of Environmental Strategy at Office Depot. “It builds from Office Depot’s leadership policy of the past but is now structured to allow better tracking of progress along a shades of green continuum. The detail we put into this policy reflects our significant commitment to bringing clarity to our question ‘what is greener paper’ – a question that has heretofore been surprisingly difficult to answer.”

As an active participant in WWF’s Global Forest and Trade Network, Office Depot agreed to update this policy, set targets and publicly report on its progress toward responsible fibre-sourcing goals. Highlights of the new paper policy, and major changes from the earlier version, include:

Minimum requirements for fibre from specific forest-certification schemes. The previous version of the Office Depot paper policy had a preference for “certified” fibre but gave no guidance 

on which forest certifications were acceptable. The new policy includes Sustainable Forestry Initiative; American Tree Farm; Programme for Endorsement of Forestry Certification (PEFC); and FSC Controlled Wood schemes as minimum requirements. As of early 2012, 91.6 per cent of Office Depot North America’s copy paper sales by weight were to SFI, PEFC or FSC certified, with the vast majority (81.5 per cent) certified SFI or PEFC. Minimum requirements are to be pursued for all paper products.