Features Environment & Sustainability
Domtar 2017 Sustainability Report highlights progress in long-term strategy

The report focuses on the areas of Caring for People and Communities, Efficient Manufacturing, and Responsible Sourcing and Logistics. It details the company’s priorities, challenges and progress through different stories and visuals.

“Our various stakeholders believe, as do we, that caring about our environment, our communities and our people helps us better meet our business objectives and deliver returns for the long term,” said John D. Williams, Domtar president and CEO. “At Domtar, everyone has a role in sustainability. We do not want sustainability to be an annex — we want it to be integrated into our everyday management.”

Domtar says that commitment to integration resulted in key accomplishments highlighted in the 2017 report, including:

• 53 per cent reduction in recordable safety incidents since 2008.
• 33 per cent reduction in waste to landfill at pulp and paper mills since 2013.
• 4,000+ hours contributed by employees at company-sponsored events.
• 13 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions at pulp and paper mills since 2010.
• 5 per cent reduction in water use at pulp and paper mills since 2012.

Caring for people and communities
In 2016, employees logged more than 290,000 safety activities across the company. These include things like reporting potential unsafe acts and conducting pre-task risk assessments. This approach helps reinforce a culture of employee engagement and contributes to reducing the number and severity of injuries, says the company.

Domtar says that for every 100 jobs in the Domtar facilities, an additional 325 jobs are created. And within those communities, the company says it contributes thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to improve lives through efforts focused on literacy, health, wellness, and sustainability.

Efficient manufacturing
Domtar says its three-part approach to improving the sustainability of its energy consumption is yielding results. The company has converted most of its carbon-intensive, coal-powered boilers to cleaner-burning and less carbon-intensive natural gas. The company is also improving efficiency across its mill system and is optimizing its self-generation of electric power. As a result, 75 per cent of the energy used in Domtar pulp and paper mills comes from renewable biomass sources, largely generated from wood processing and pulping byproducts.

Responsible sourcing and logistics
Domtar’s demand for locally sourced wood creates incentives for landowners to keep forests as forests. The company’s collaboration with landowners and other partners promotes the benefits of sustainable forest management and third-party certification, which provides an additional level of assurance of responsible forest management.

The company has continued to meet 34 per cent of its fibre needs with certified wood, including 19 per cent from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified sources, even as overall FSC acres have declined in the United States.

The 2017 Sustainability Report, Working Smart for the Long Term, was prepared in accordance with the core option of the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. This framework encourages companies to focus their sustainability reports thoughtfully on the issues that matter most to their customers, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders.

“Making products for which there is growing demand, leveraging our access to renewable wood fibre, repurposing our assets for biorefining, and turning byproducts into new revenue streams have become central to Domtar’s plan for long-term sustainable growth,” says the company.