We’ve been recognized again! Winning The New Economy’s Clean Tech Award for Best Forestry and Paper Solutions

Once again, our hard work on the sustainability front is paying off and being recognized. Following on the heels of being named to Corporate Knights Best 50 and Canada’s Clean50, Resolute has been awarded The New Economy’s Clean Tech Award for Best Forestry and Paper Solutions for 2014.

The New Economy, published quarterly in print and digital versions, is a technology, business and finance magazine that promotes leadership, innovation and investment opportunities in established and emerging markets, across enterprise sectors that are considered to be shaping the future.

Of course, we were delighted to have been considered for this award, and now excited to have won our category. Our congratulations goes out to all the other category winners.

Now in their sixth year, The New Economy’s Clean Tech Awards honor and recognize companies around the world whose ideas, achievements, projects and solutions reflect innovation, long-term vision and leadership. Considerations for the awards include research and development initiatives, overall strategy, and sustainability approach and achievements. And we certainly have plenty of the latter. Here’s just a sampling of what our employees’ and the company’s concerted efforts have achieved:

• Achieving and surpassing, ahead of schedule, our ambitious WWF-Climate Savers program goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 65% by 2015, compared to 2000 levels. Our 65% goal is an industry-leading GHG reduction target and represents the equivalent of taking 1.62 million cars off the road.
• Reaching our goal of recording an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) incident rate below 1.0, which is considered world class.
• Implementing third-party certification for 100% of our managed woodlands using at least one of three internationally recognized standards for sustainable forest management.
• Putting third-party, chain-of-custody fiber tracking systems in place at all of our facilities in Canada and the U.S. to identify and control the source of the fiber or wood used in the company’s products.
• Investing $90 million in three projects in Northwestern Ontario that will create 200 new Resolute jobs: a new sawmill at Atikokan; reopening an idled sawmill at Ignace; and, building a now-operational pellet plant in Thunder Bay.
• Partnering with First Nations in our operating communities.
  • In 2013, our Opitciwan (Quebec) joint-venture sawmill was awarded the prestigious Aboriginal Forest Products Business Leadership Award by the Forest Products Association of Canada and the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.
  • We recently made commitments to award more than $100 million in contracts to First Nations as a result of our sawmill projects in Northwestern Ontario.
  • Resolute was instrumental in helping the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation establish a tree nursery, from which the company now buys over one million trees annually.
• Enhancing energy efficiency and investing in clean energy at our operations, reflected in our recent ramp up of four power generation assets within the past year, including our $65 million cogeneration facility in Thunder Bay (Ontario).
• Investing in switching to cleaner energy and now today, 75 percent of our energy needs comes from renewable sources, and 71 percent from biomass.
• Developing and launching our Align brand of eco-efficient, budget-friendly papers, which use up to 50% less wood fiber than freesheet, and which an independent lifecycle assessment showed have a carbon footprint 35% to 85% smaller than traditional offset papers.