Philanthropy & Cause Initiatives

Domtar's EarthChoice Ambassadors: 2019 Year-End Review

Jan 14, 2020 10:10 AM ET

As we celebrate the eighth anniversary of the EarthChoice® Ambassador (ECA) program, we know its effect on Domtar communities is stronger than ever, as seen in this year-end review.

The ECA mission is to promote sustainable practices that focus on our customers, employees, company and communities. In 2019, five new ECA teams were launched in Brownsville, Tennessee; Owensboro, Kentucky; Ridgefields (Kingsport), Tennessee; Tatum, South Carolina; and Madrid, Spain. Now, we have an ECA chapter at every Domtar facility in North America. Our ECA teams collaborated with each other and with organizations in creative ways to improve literacy, sustainability and the health and wellness of our company and communities.

“I’m so proud to see how far we have come in eight short years,” says Heather Stowe, Domtar’s corporate social responsibility manager. “The ECA team at each Domtar facility has become the go-to group in terms of community service and all things green. The members help our financial contributions develop into volunteer opportunities for employees and have become idea generators to further our impact on the towns where we live, work and play.”

Year-End Review: 2019 ECA Events

This year-end review shows some of the many ways EarthChoice Ambassadors encourage sustainable work habits and lead by example. They are committed to the printed page, especially in the classroom. Through a variety of ECA events, they promoted literacy in our communities by putting books in the hands of kids, paper in their classrooms and supplies in their backpacks to help them succeed in school and life.

We’re highlighting just a few of the community investment projects accomplished by ECA teams in 2019 in our year-end review:

  • The Kingsport and newly established Ridgefields ECA teams volunteered more than 100 hours to construct the Castle Playground at Johnson Elementary School.
  • The Hawesville and newly established Owensboro ECA teams partnered with the Student Conservation Association to clean up Jeffreys Cliffs Conservation and Recreation Area.
  • Teams in Ashdown, Brownsville, Dryden, Fort Mill, Kamloops, Montreal, Nekoosa and Rothschild assembled 3,250 Comfort and Care Kits to donate to underserved families in our communities. Each kit contained two packs of Comfees® diapers and three board books.
  • Our Port Huron team initiated a core recycling program, diverting an estimated 25-plus tons of cardboard from the landfill.
  • Domtar facilities in the United States and Canada held Powerful Pages reading celebrations with our literacy partner First Book. This year, students across North America have received more than 50,000 books to call their own.
  • In Espanola, ECA volunteers planted 20 red pine saplings in Domtar’s Wellness Way Park. In addition, Domtar gave 150 saplings to Espanola employees and 350 saplings to students during a spring beautification effort.
  • Johnsonburg employees and family members pitched in to help with maintenance and park improvements at the Johnsonburg Area Knothole Recreational Park.

These events are just a few of the great projects our ECA teams completed in 2019. For more information on this year’s educational and environmental programs and other ECA accomplishments, take a look at this EarthChoice Ambassadors Year-in-Review 2019 graphic.