Lessons Learned About Corporate Environmental Reporters: Paper Industry Experience (Panel Discussion), 1998 Environmental Conference Proceedings

Panel Moderator:

Allan M. Springer

Miami University

Panel Topics and Panelists:

Champion International Experience with Environmental Reporting

Edward O. Clem

Champion International Corp.

Georgia-Pacific Experience with Environmental Reporting

David W. Mayer

Georgia-Pacific Corporation

Mead Corporation Experience with Environmental Reporting

Dirk Krouskop

Mead Corporation

E. B. Eddy Experience with Environmental Reporting

Roger Cook

E. B. Eddy Forest Products Ltd.

This session is a continuation of a series of sessions started in 1995 in an attempt to educate the technical community about issues of importance to sustainability. The paper industry must endorse the principles of sustainability if it is going to gain the initiative and stop the increase in command and control legislation that it is confronted with. We must convince the public that we can operate in a responsible manner. Corporate environmental reports are an important tool in this process. When I collected these two years ago, 18 paper companies in the U.S. and Canada had instituted such reports. In this session we will share the lessons learned from completing these reports. As engineers and scientists, we must encourage our companies to institute practices that are compatible with the principles of sustainability. One is always struggling with what these principles are exactly.. I recently encountered an organization called “The Natural Step” that has formulated a series of principles which scientists can agree upon. They are:

(1) matter and energy cannot appear and disappear -- first law of thermodynamics;

(2) matter and energy spread through the environment -- second law of thermodynamics;

(3) biological and economic value (quality) is in concentration and structure of matter;

(4) green cells are essentially the only net producer of concentration and structure (photosynthesis). These principles which all can agree upon lead to the following set of constraints by which we must in a compatible manner lead our lives and have our companies conduct business.

1. Substances from the earths crust cannot systematically increase in the biosphere.

2. Substances produced by society cannot systematically increase in the biosphere.

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