Environmental not-for-profit Canopy just released the 2019 Blueline Ranking – a widely used customer tool which profiles and ranks the sustainability performance of North America’s largest printers.
It is an absolute honour to be awarded 2nd place for Canopy’s Blueline Ranking 2019, an important tool that helps printers reach their climate and sustainability goals by ranking them according to an extensive list of 41 Ancient and Endangered Forest conservation criterion.
Raising the Bar for Ancient & Endangered Forest Conservation
Canopy challenged us this year to up our game with the addition of new criteria. When developing progressive policy’s for sustainability, it is integral for Hemlock to benchmark our progress from year to year and take an active leadership role in sustainable procurement and innovation
To strengthen our environmental contributions, our Sustainability Coordinator worked to ensure that Hemlock was a strong advocate for:
- Sustainable Supply Chain: We requested forest of origin information from 18 paper merchants and mills to assess the risk of having Ancient and Endangered Forests in our supply chain
- Progression in R&D for Agricultural Residue Fibre: We asked a mill partner to test paper made from North American sourced agricultural residue fibre since alternatives like wheat straw pulp carries half the ecological footprint of conventional word fibre pulps
- Motivating Government: We wrote to government decision–makers to encourage them to implement additional conservation plans and protected area proposals in a priority landscape in Canada’s Boreal Forest.
Sharing our Sustainable Practices with the World
An integral part of the Blueline Ranking is to ensure that we are being transparent about our sustainable practices. For this reason, our Sustainability and Marketing team dedicated their time to updating our website content and design elements to put sustainability at the forefront of what we publicly report.
Today, Hemlock is proud to share on our website that:
70% of our paper has a portion of recycled content.
Our clients purchase 50 times the amount of paper made from 100% recycled content than they did in 2010.
FSC paper used by our clients exceeds 90% of the stocks on which we print.
A word from our President, Richard Kouwenhoven:
“Thank you to Canopy for developing the annual Blueline Report and for guiding printers across the country to implement policies that protect our vital forests. We are very committed to continue our progress and look forward to challenging for the #1 spot in 2020! Canopy continues to be an inspiration, focusing our industry, publishers, corporations and the general public on the vital role original and intact forests play in the health of our planet.”
Being among the top-ranked printers
We applaud The Printing House and Mitchell Press for placing alongside Hemlock as the only three printers awarded with the Dark Green Ink Drop. Together, we can inspire other printers to adopt stronger policies and practices around sustainable procurement, innovation, and environmental reporting.
To learn more about the Blueline Ranking 2019 see Canopy’s media release.