Thank you for inviting me here this afternoon to speak on a subject I believe is critical to the success of my business – and yours as well. And that is, Sustainability.
While this may be a new subject to you, it’s certainly not to us. Weyerhaeuser Company has been deeply committed to sustainability for more than 75 years. That doesn’t mean we have all the answers, but it does mean we have some experience.
Before I begin, let me say it is always a pleasure to return to my home state of Oregon, and to visit with local business and community leaders such as you gathered here today.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Albany was the manufacturing and transportation hub of the Willamette Valley. The area was flush with foundries, blacksmith shops, furniture factories and tanneries. There was a bag factory, carriage factories, flour and flax mills and a twine factory. Creameries and sawmills dotted the valley landscape.
Today, Albany’s strong manufacturing tradition continues, and Weyerhaeuser is proud to be part of that tradition. By partnering with the community, my company helps sustain the local economy and local employment base here in Linn County.
Weyerhaeuser employs close to 800 people in the Albany-Millersburg area. Not far from here our Duraflake business makes particleboard. Our Trus Joist plant makes engineered lumber. Our paper mill produces linerboard for cardboard boxes and heavy Kraft paper for paper bags. We run a trucking operation in Millersburg, just off the I-5 corridor, and a timberland and regional office in the heart of the community.
As you can see, Weyerhaeuser is deeply ingrained here. An Enterprise Zone agreement with the cities of Albany and Millersburg has allowed us to build our engineered lumber plant and modernize our paper mill. As a result, this has helped us produce and sustain hundreds of good, family-wage jobs for the area.
At our other nearby operations, which includes two sawmills and a veneer plant, you can add another 500 employees. This brings Weyerhaeuser’s total employment to almost 13-hundred people in Linn County.
In addition to our “people investment,” we have made a substantial financial commitment here as well. Our multi-million dollar capital project to improve manufacturing processes at our Albany containerboard mill is one such example.
Another way we connect to the community is through our citizenship efforts. We give back to the community in the form of Weyerhaeuser Company Foundation grants and employee volunteer contributions.
I am proud that in 2004, we contributed more than $143-thousand to Linn County schools and non-profit organizations. I am also proud of our Albany employees who, with assistance from our company foundation, contributed over $200,000 to United Way of Linn County. These same employees were the ones who, along with our foundation, contributed $400,000 to the Albany aquatic center project. And, their generosity goes beyond Albany city limits. An example is the contribution our local operations gave to Trillium Family Services for its Children’s Farm Home. Since 2003, we have provided more than $100,000 to help Trillium provide programs that serve children and families in Linn and Benton counties and from across Oregon.
I mention all of this because it illustrates my topic today, which is “Building Sustainability.”
It seems as though everywhere you turn these days – in newspapers, magazines, radio and television – we bump into that word, “sustainability.” You hear or read about sustainable development, sustainable economy, sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, sustainable energy, sustainable communities, sustainable resources… And the list goes on.
The roots of sustainability go at least as far back as two hundred years, if not longer. In the 1800s, two American writers, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, described our relationship with nature and stressed the importance of living in a sustainable world.
So what does sustainability mean? Out of curiosity, I did a quick web search on Google and came up with many definitions. Twenty-six, in fact.
In modern times, one of the first uses of the term sustainability surfaced about 25 years ago. In a report from the World Commission of Environment and Development, sustainable growth was defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Put in simpler terms, this commonly-used definition says sustainability is providing the best for people and the environment both now and in the indefinite future.
This definition mentions meeting needs. What are the needs we humans have? Well, we all need clean water to drink. Healthy food to eat. Ample wood to build our homes. And energy to heat them or power our lights. To meet our needs, we use resources – natural resources provided by our natural environment.
It makes sense we would want our planet to stay healthy and continue to provide us with these resources, today and long into the future. One of the challenges, though, is that the harvesting, sale, use and consumption of these resources are what drive our economy. We all want to make enough money to support our families and ourselves, but if we harvest more than what is being replaced, is that being sustainable?
As business leaders, you know that people need and use the products and services your company provides. Likewise, I know that people need and use the products my company makes – lumber for homes, paper for communication and boxes for shipping. Weyerhaeuser is a global company and recognizes our responsibility for leadership and accountability. We work hard at being good stewards of the environment. And we believe that well-managed forests – where wood is produced in a renewable cycle – are part of the solution to sustaining forests worldwide.
So, let’s start there – with forestry – which, at Weyerhaeuser, is synonymous with sustainability.
Every year, we harvest only 1 to 3 percent of the land we manage. Then we plant more than 100 million tree seedlings in the next available growing season. Our practices are based on sound science, ensuring that forests in our care will be available to make the products you use every day.
This is nothing new for us. For more than 100 years, we have routinely practiced sustainable forestry. Frederick Weyerhaeuser, one of the founders of the company, had a view of managing the forests that took into account future generations. On the company’s founding in 1900, he is reported to have said: “This is not for us, nor for our children, but for our grandchildren.”
In the early 1940s, the company pioneered the American Tree Farm system of sustained yield forest management. On some of our private land we are now harvesting our third forest crop. Still today, our commitment to forest renewal and to silviculture research is deep and long-standing.
A way to make sure we are doing the right thing in managing our forest resources is to have our sustainable practices certified by a third party. All our forests in this country – such as the Snow Peak Tree Farm about 25 miles east of here – are certified to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Certification ensures that wood and paper products come from well-managed forests. And well-managed forests ensure that there will be wood available for future generations.
We have our forests certified not only because some of our customers demand certification of forests and forest products, but because it is the right thing to do.
Weyerhaeuser’s interest is to make sure the environment is protected so we can ensure working forests remain productive forever. In my opinion, the heart of forestry is sustainability – and practicing sustainable forestry is the number one thing we can do to help the forest products industry survive and prosper.
As a result of sustainable forestry practices, there are more trees in the United States today than there were 80 years ago. And because more trees are grown in this country than are harvested, there will be plenty of trees and forest products for future generations to enjoy.
But sustainability is so much more than replenishing our forests. Before going any further, let’s step outside the traditional “sustainability box” and throw something into the mix that even Thoreau and Emerson would never have dreamed to consider. In fact, something that most of us would never stop to consider. And that is, technology – and technology’s impact on sustainable business practices.
We know that technology leads to change, and usually for the better. In my industry, change in silviculture has increased our yield and changes in the laboratory have brought us new products. Sustainability is usually associated with ensuring that our harvest rates do not exceed our capability to regenerate new trees for future generations.
Sustainability is more than rationing resources. So allow me to give you a new definition of sustainability. It’s one that DuPont uses – Sustainable growth is “the creation of shareholder and society value while decreasing our environmental footprint along the value chains in which we operate.”
Hear how different this sounds than rationing our needs and resources? Listen to DuPont’s success metrics: a decreased environmental footprint is evidenced by reduction in air emissions, reduced waste streams and a decreased rate of injury. By Dupont’s standards, Weyerhaeuser is award-eligible in environmental sustainability. We, too, are reducing our footprint while creating value for our shareholders. Our value to society is clear: consumers choose wood.
And the role technology plays in our sustainable future allows us to reduce our environmental footprint in so many ways. Technology touches everything we do. In my industry, technology allows us to cut straight boards from curved logs, and allows us to be more efficient in using every part of a tree. Technology influences the growing of more trees on fewer acres, the conservation of energy at our mills, and the recycling of paper.
This brings me to the next important ingredient of sustainability – recycling. About the time the Oregon Bottle Bill took effect – some 30 years ago – Weyerhaeuser also began its recycling business.
Why recycle? While our forest resources are abundant, adding recycled fiber to new wood fiber is a good way to stretch our forest resources. Recycling also helps control waste disposal problems. For every ton of paper recovered for recycling, about 3 cubic yards of landfill space are saved. And in many cases, recovering paper and cardboard for recycling can save communities money that they would otherwise have to spend for disposal.
Today in North America, Weyerhaeuser collects more than 7 million tons of recovered paper each year, enough to fill 140,000 train cars. And, through technology, we are testing new ways to recover even more.
We are a significant producer of paper with recycled content and use about two-thirds of what we collect to make new paper. The rest is sold to mills around the world to make products with recycled content. Our paper averages more than 35 percent post-consumer recycled content across all our paper products. In one product line – corrugated boxes – it averages more than 50 percent. And the paper for those boxes is made right here in Albany.
Up to now, we’ve talked about forestry practices, technology and recycling as important ingredients to building sustainability. Let’s take a look at a fourth important ingredient – conservation.
Weyerhaeuser believes conservation is good business. Trees are valuable. Innovations such as engineered lumber help ensure we get the most out of each tree we harvest. These engineered lumber products are made right here in Albany at our Trus Joist business. What wood isn’t used to make a product is either left to return nutrients to the soil or used to create energy to run our plants.
In manufacturing, we reuse 98 percent of the chemicals required for making paper. Two-thirds of the energy we need for pulp and paper mills is generated from the manufacturing process itself. We’re investing millions of dollars to continuously improve energy conservation and environmental performance.
And it has paid off. Not only in terms of sustainability, but also in terms of national attention for our conservation efforts. Earlier this month our containerboard mill in Albany became the first paper mill in America to receive the Energy Star Award. We received this honor from the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy for our energy efficiency and pollution reduction qualities. The award recognized our combined heat and power system that makes great use of our country’s limited fuel resources. The Albany plant, which is fueled by natural gas and biomass, is 100 percent power self sufficient by generating electricity, not only for the paper mill, but for Duraflake and Trus Joist as well. And, at times, the mill even provides power to the energy grid. Not only in Albany, but throughout the Weyerhaeuser manufacturing system, we are making huge strides in energy self-sufficiency.
Earlier I said sustainability means providing the best for people and the environment both now and in the indefinite future. However, sustainable development is not just about the environment. It is about the way we do business, the way we approach our jobs and the way we make decisions. Sustainable development is based on fundamental business principles – not on sentiment.
As businesses, we need to make a conscious effort to cut waste and increase efficiency in how we use resources. We must listen to our customers, clients and home communities. Above all, we must demonstrate the spirit of innovation.
Companies and corporations can show a commitment to sustainability by enhancing their traditional financial reporting to include the environmental and social impact of their operations. This sends a strong signal to citizens and to markets. A positive signal that we care about our customers and our communities.
While we see more and more examples of companies reporting on their environmental performance and their social impacts, the next step has to be more integrated approaches to reporting. Weyerhaeuser is working hard in this arena. By finding ways to link together financial, environmental and social reporting, the business case for sustainable development will become even stronger.
The push for sustainability will not go away. This is not a fad. The expectation that corporations must take social responsibility and environmental factors into account in their decision-making will not fade away.
Weyerhaeuser believes in thinking globally and acting locally. The Energy Star Award at the Albany paper mill is one such example of local accountability. We still have many opportunities to improve and maybe that’s something we can do together – to step up and find ways to conserve energy and reduce waste. Sustainable development is not something that is done to us – or for us. It is something all of us must do together.
Today I talked about how sound forestry practices, technology, conservation, recycling and social commitment are all important ingredients to building sustainability. I gave you examples of how Weyerhaeuser is working to make our industry more sustainable, but there is a lot more we can do.
Everyone uses wood and paper products and expects good environmental stewardship. And everyone wants clean air and water, quality fish and wildlife habitat, scenic vistas and outdoor recreation. Our job at Weyerhaeuser is to ensure that healthy, sustainable forests grow, and grow again. And, at the same time, to respect society’s values. It’s what building sustainability is all about.
We all want to work in a business respected by the public, and valued by customers. We all want employees to feel pride in the work they do, and in the products we make. And we all want a secure and prosperous future for our business enterprises.
It will take more than just technology or capital to get there. We need to listen, learn and match our performance against expectations. It will take a concerted effort by us all to reflect and respect our shareholder’s and society’s evolving values. It will take a concerted effort by us all to build sustainability into our everyday business practices.
