Eco-Efficient Products
Resolute Forest Products manufactures and markets a diverse range of products, including market pulp, tissue, wood products and papers. As we continue to strive to be a global industry leader on sustainability, we are fortunate that our primary input – wood – is a renewable resource, and that our paper products are recyclable. Yet this alone does not make our products sustainable.
To further improve our environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, the company has implemented sustainable forestry practices and responsible fiber sourcing, while making significant investments in improving the environmental performance of our manufacturing processes, including the development of innovative products that maximize our use of fiber. We also track and report our public sustainability commitments, in addition to disclosing our performance according to internationally recognized ESG reporting frameworks.
Tracing Our Products to Their Source
Increasingly, customers are asking for assurance that the pulp, paper, tissue and wood products they buy from Resolute originate from responsible sources. All of our manufacturing facilities have fiber-tracking systems that enable the company to follow the flow of wood from its point of origin, through the manufacturing process, to the customer. In fact, 100% of these tracking systems are certified by independent third-party audit firms to one or more internationally recognized chain of custody (CoC) standards, providing assurance that our wood comes from acceptable sources.
CoC-certified tracking systems allow us to track and document exactly how much wood and wood fiber comes from forests certified to forest management standards. Under CoC standards, uncertified fiber content must also meet minimum due diligence requirements, such as the risk of illegal logging and wood harvested in violation of human rights. Depending on the specific CoC standard, additional requirements may include high conservation values, conversion of forests to non-forest uses, genetically modified tree planting, corruption, Indigenous and/or workers’ rights. For both our internal and external wood and fiber, 100% is also sourced in accordance with SFI fiber sourcing requirements, PEFC CoC due diligence requirements or the FSC Controlled Wood standard, and in some cases a combination of these standards.
For more information, visit our Chain of Custody page.
Recycled Content
The company operates a recycled pulp mill in Menominee (Michigan) that sources 100% of its fibre from recovered fiber. In addition, our Hialeah (Florida) tissue mill manufactures Green Heritage® products featuring recycled and/or virgin fiber content certified to third-party standards such as EcoLogo® and Green Seal®. In 2022, Resolute used over 142,000 metric tons of recovered paper. To learn more about the environmental tradeoffs and benefits, visit our Recycled Content page.
Cellulose Filaments
In 2022, Resolute launched a C$27 million cellulose filament (CF) plant located at our Kénogami paper mill in Saguenay, Quebec. Derived from wood fiber, CF are a novel, 100% natural biomaterial additive for products like concrete, plastics and coatings, to improve their technical performance and environmental footprint.
This product could potentially replace clear plastic films used in a number of everyday applications, notably in store packaging of fresh foods. For example, the plastic window on a typical premium bread bag can be replaced with the new CF-based film, representing a 100% biosourced package that can be easily disposed of through a single-stream recycling collection system or a typical municipal composting infrastructure. This product offers a sustainable alternative to single-use plastics in a range of applications.
For more information on CF, visit our blogpost.
Customer Requests and Satisfaction
Our customers’ priorities are assessed every two to three years through our stakeholder engagement surveys to better understand the sustainability issues important to them. In addition, we proactively track and respond to customer sustainability requests, which span issues as diverse as product and environmental stewardship to health and safety practices. In 2022, we received and completed 131 such requests, a slight decrease over 2021.
Resolute focuses on customer satisfaction by measuring quality and service key performance indicators (KPI) and monitoring our established processes and practices. Our goal is to continuously improve customer satisfaction levels for flexibility, quality and service. Tissue joined our tracking initiative in August 2020, and Wood Products did so in 2022.
Resolute’s customer service KPIs help us get to the root cause of a customer service problem or quality issue. Our KPIs measure product consistency, overall customer satisfaction, quality claims, mill transit claims, changes in year-over-year claims and timely communication. In 2022, we reviewed and closed 96% of root cause cases that were initiated for our pulp, paper and tissue customers, an improvement over 2021.
