Canada: Globe and Mail Gets with Responsible Paper

The Globe and Mail announced Wednesday a new procurement policy for newsprint and other papers, requiring its paper suppliers to be environmentally responsible.

“The Globe’s policy commits to practices that will eliminate the use of papers derived from high conservation value forests, supporting key environmental and climate impacts in the newspaper publishing sector,” said Phillip Crawley, The Globe and Mail’s Publisher and CEO. “We’re proud to be at the forefront in our industry in helping to safeguard and protect the world and Canada’s forests and climate.”

The policy involves The Globe’s commitment to:
• reduce the use of fibre from ancient and endangered forests, such as the Canadian Boreal Forests; Temperate Rainforests of British Columbia, Alaska and Chile; and the Tropical Rainforests of Indonesia and the Amazon;
• progressively maximize recycled content in all of its papers by working with suppliers to establish interval benchmarks for post-consumer recycled content;
• support a preference for virgin wood fibre certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, an independent, non-profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests;
• actively encourage suppliers to eliminate the production of persistent organic pollutants or chlorine bleach;
• explore the use of non-wood agricultural residues;
• implement and expand internal business processes that will reduce paper use and encourage maximized paper recycling.

“Now, more than ever, newspapers need to show environmental leadership and innovation,” said Nicole Rycroft from leading environmental publishing advocates, Canopy. “And as the first major North American daily national newspaper to develop an Ancient Forest Friendly policy, The Globe is showing how it's done."