Sustainable Manufacturing

“Sustainability” encompasses a broad range of activities in the forest products value chain, starting with the use of sustainable forest management practices and ending with the responsible management of industry products at end-of-life. Between the two ends of this value chain are a variety of large and small manufacturing facilities, raw material suppliers, transport operations and many other activities which have the potential to impact the environment.

Much of NCASI’s research program is directed at characterizing the potential impacts of these various activities along the value chain, and identifying cost- effective ways to reduce these impacts. In a broad sense, therefore, most of NCASI’s research addresses important sustainability questions. There are several particular types of sustainability-related questions, however, that are of special interest to the industry’s customers and other stakeholders. These questions are the focus of the research and information organized on this section of NCASI’s website.

The sustainability research done by NCASI that is of special interest to industry customers and other important stakeholders is organized according to the following topic areas:

• Life Cycle Assessment
• Chemicals & Products
• Recycling
• Climate Change & Carbon Management
• Sustainable Forest Management
• Water Sustainability
• Scorecards

In the material dealing with each of these areas, links are provided to other pages on the NCASI website that contain more extensive listings of NCASI research relevant to these issues.

Questions on these topics may be directed to Kirsten Vice, Vice President, Sustainable Manufacturing and Canadian Operations.