ATLANTA — The nation’s largest manufacturer of plywood, Georgia-Pacific LLC, will not buy timber from environmentally sensitive areas and will discourage landowners from clearing hardwood forests under a new policy, it said last week.
Georgia-Pacific, which makes wood and fiber products, announced the plan with three environmental groups. Activists said the company’s new policy goes a step beyond conservation policies set by other firms by using a scoring system backed by satellite and other mapping technologies to identify protected forests.
The policy is a product of seven years of discussions started when the Rainforest Action Network pressured big Georgia-Pacific customers, including Home Depot and Lowe’s over their wood supply. Georgia-Pacific opened talks that eventually involved a trio of environmental organizations.
“We continue to believe it is possible to operate in a way that is environmentally responsible and also economically sound,” said Jim Hannan, Georgia-Pacific’s chief executive officer and president. “This policy also gives us the opportunity to address issues of increasing interest to our customers and to consumers.”
In Arkansas, the company has facilities in Crossett, Gurdon, Fordyce and Fort Smith.
The new policy is nonbinding, so Georgia-Pacific faces no penalties other than possible embarrassment should it fail to meet its goals. Company executives will not call the policy an agreement, and they are still deciding how it will be enforced.
Still, the environmental groups involved in the negotiations consider it a step forward and have been promised annual updates from the company.
The policy sets two primary principles. First, Georgia-Pacific will not buy pine fiber from lands that were formerly natural hardwood forests andwere cleared after July 2008 to plant pine plantations, a process called conversion. Conservationists put a high priority on stopping conversion since it destroys habitats that plants and wildlife depend on.
The second principle was to label some areas “endangered forests” and “special areas” that Georgia-Pacific has agreed will be off-limits.
Business, Pages 74 on 11/21/2010