Sustainable forestry has been a passion and strategy for The Home Depot for over 25 years. Over the years, we have established supply chain protocols to ensure visibility into where our products come from and to safeguard the health of these forests.
One example of this is our preference for certified wood. Wood is considered ‘certified’ if it has been managed and harvested under strict guidelines and monitored by a third party to ensure sustainable practices are followed.
J.D. Irving, Limited (JDI) has proven that sustainable forestry management is good not only for trees, but also for the planet and business. Their lumber products are certified under the rigorous standard of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). The lands they own and manage, as well as their forestry activities, are certified under the SFI and follow the proper processes and procedures of the ISO 14401 Environmental Management System. In Maine, their woodlands are also certified under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) program.
JDI is an integrated forest products company based in New Brunswick, Canada, who provide lumber, pulp, paper, tissue and pellet products. They know that a well-managed, diverse forest is the foundation of success.
Tree planting is a core value for JDI and ensures that the forests they own or manage will be sustainable for generations to come. According to a study by Dr. Chris Hennigar from the University of New Brunswick, JDI’s entire forest products value chain is carbon negative, absorbing more carbon than it emits. Forests and forest products are critical in the fight against climate change. From replacing carbon-intensive building materials and plastics, to providing green energy, to sequestering carbon through well-managed forests, the woods in our lives has never been as important as it is today.
Each year, the company grows and plants roughly 18 million trees. Since 1957, JDI has planted over one billion trees – a national record in Canada. That means 4x the carbon sequestration. By harvesting trees and making forest products like lumber, carbon is stored in homes, furniture and other forest products for hundreds of years – making their forest products a net carbon sink.
Guided by an 80-year management plan that incorporates habitat, conservation, recreation, carbon stocks and timber supply, the company collaborates with dozens of researchers and more than 100 graduate students to learn and adapt their management based on facts and science. In addition, they continue to find a better way every day with their world-first technologies for precision forestry. By having the forest at our fingertips, their foresters can provide real-time updates from their on-the-ground assessments, enabling their team to deliver more than 20 forest products to over 30 mills across a 30,000km road network. The technology used today is driving their business forward.
JDI manages and continuously reinvests in every part of their vertically integrated forestry business – from seed to shelf.
