How can Canada transition away from the forestry industry?

Climate change, pests and unsustainable harvesting have left the Canadian forestry industry vulnerable. But as wildfires across the country decimate large swaths of Canada’s remaining forests, an international non-profit based in Vancouver is helping companies find alternatives to pulp and paper-based packaging in an effort to ease the pressure on forests.

In order to meet its climate targets, Canada must transition away from its heavy reliance on forestry, which contributes $34.8 billion to the country’s nominal GDP and provided 177,693 Canadians with jobs in 2021. The logging industry is one of the highest greenhouse gas emitters in Canada, according to a 2022 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Nature Canada. It accounts for more than 10 per cent of Canada’s total emissions, on par with oilsands production.

The report also found the Canadian government has failed to precisely report the logging industry’s emissions and has not yet adopted a management plan to reduce them. Without a clear strategy from the federal government, Canada risks missing its 2030 climate targets leaving its boreal forest — one of the largest sections of intact forest on Earth — vulnerable to unsustainable harvesting.

Nicole Rycroft is not waiting for an action plan from the government. She is taking forest protection into her own hands by helping companies across the globe transition away from the logging industry. Rycroft is the founder and executive director of Canopy, an international Vancouver-based environmental non-profit that has worked with over 900 companies worldwide, including Nike, H&M and Zara, to implement circular supply chains and reduce deforestation. Canopy aims to help companies transition away from single-use paper packaging and cellulosic fabrics that are sourced from logging and instead use recycled, discarded materials and sustainable alternatives.

“Between today and about 10 years from now, we'll have 60 million tonnes of next-generation products on the market globally,” said Rycroft. “That will displace one-third of the trees that are currently cut down to make pulp and paper packaging and disposable clothing. It will enable us to ensure that absolutely no ancient and endangered forest fibre is being cut to disappear into a pulp machine.”

The pulp and paper industry uses 33 to 40 per cent of the industrial wood traded globally. This wood is often sourced in an unsustainable manner that involves clear-cutting, illegal harvesting and human rights abuses. Many of the forests that are being clear-cut also have high conservation value due to the diversity of species that call these forests home and the amount of carbon they can sequester, preventing the greenhouse gas from accumulating in our atmosphere and contributing to climate change.

“When you cut down forests, the carbon that has been stored in the trees and in the soil gets released into the atmosphere, leading to more impacts of climate change,” said Rycroft. “[Climate change] leads to more forest fires and more pest infestations, so you then lose more forests, which leads to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You end up with this very negative cycle.”

Canopy aims to reduce global pulp and paper consumption by 16.65 million tonnes from 2016 levels by 2030, according to the non-profit’s 2020-30 action plan. This ambitious goal will be accomplished by working with companies and suppliers to change policies and facilitate the transition towards sustainable alternatives. This transition will include sourcing packaging and fabric from recycled, discarded materials, investing in mills that produce paper alternatives, like straw and other agricultural fibres, and sourcing wood products from sustainable sites, not endangered or ancient forests of high conservation value.

According to Rycroft, using recycled materials has the lowest environmental footprint, and Canopy encourages its industry partners to prioritize recycled material over other alternatives. Approximately 100 billion items of clothing are produced globally each year and more than 60 per cent of those items end up in a landfill within 12 months, according to Rycroft. Recycling these materials for the pulp and paper industry not only reduces the number of trees that are needed but also helps to divert clothing from landfills.

Agricultural residues left over after the harvest are the next most sustainable alternative. In Canada, 50 million tonnes of straw is produced annually and only half of that is required for agriculture, said Rycroft. The remaining straw is an “untapped resource” that Rycroft believes should be used in pulp and paper mills, instead of shipped away and burned in other countries like India.

Rycroft also acknowledges there is still a need for trees that are planted for the purpose of being used in the pulp and paper industry. However, crops such as hemp and bamboo are a more sustainable alternative than trees, as long as they are sourced from responsible sites that ensure these plants do not become invasive, said Rycroft. And if the companies Canopy works with still need to source some of their packaging or fabric from wood-based pulp and paper mills, Canopy ensures they only use products sourced from sites certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, “the most rigorous certification system out there,” according to Rycroft. FSC-certified sites protect ancient and endangered forests, prioritize biodiversity preservation, protect Indigenous and local community rights, and ensure that workers are paid a fair wage.

Many of the solutions to forest degradation already exist, we just need to make use of alternative materials and modify the infrastructure that we already have, according to Rycroft. Many existing pulp and paper mills can be retrofitted to mill recycled paper, clothing and agricultural fibres.

“You can actually bundle up hundreds of millions of old jeans and T-shirts and send those to the mill to be manufactured,” said Rycroft. “There's no reason that we can’t do this here in British Columbia as well as across Canada. There's no shortage of shuttered wood-based pulp mills.”

By retrofitting closed pulp mills and reopening them to manufacture paper packaging and clothing made from recycled materials or agricultural residues, the Canadian pulp and paper industry can help revitalize local economies and transition towards a circular supply chain.

“The marketplace is shifting,” said Rycroft. “The tolerance for products that are generated through these linear, extractive, ‘take, make, waste’ production systems is disappearing. The Canadian industry and the Canadian government are going to be caught on the wrong foot.”