Georgia-Pacific's John Mulcahy: Reflecting on Stewardship
By John Mulcahy VP - Stewardship at Georgia-Pacific LLC
Now that my kids have left for college, I’ve had a chance to reflect on our summer, which included visits to five national parks (White Sands, Grand Canyon, Zion, Arches, and Canyonlands) and a return to southwest Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. As I hiked through the hot desert of New Mexico, camped at a chilly 11,000’ on Imogene Pass, or looked down at whitewater rafters braving the rushing Colorado River hundreds of feet below my perch on the north rim, I was struck by the unique gifts our natural environment provides.
While being a nice respite from the office, it at the same time reinforced the importance of Georgia-Pacific LLC’s commitment to stewardship. I work as a part of a team that helps my company source raw materials more responsibly, use resources more efficiently, and reduce waste. We also work to understand the needs of our customers, employees, and communities and look for opportunities to create mutual benefit. Georgia-Pacific relies on the natural environment for the timber, water, and other resources we use to create products that meet societal needs. GP has been helping people improve their lives through mutual benefit for almost a century. As a forest products company, we rely on healthy and abundant forests, and clean and plentiful water. Forests protect air and water quality, serve as habitat for wildlife, provide recreational, spiritual, and cultural uses, deliver carbon benefits, and offer natural resources to make products people want and need. My family certainly enjoyed those recreational and spiritual benefits during our time together out west. At Georgia-Pacific, we work to use these resources efficiently, source responsibly, protect endangered areas, and support wildlife conservation and biodiversity.
I’d like to highlight three areas where Georgia-Pacific is investing in conservation outcomes across the country:
- Our endangered forest program. We use scientific methodologies — developed in conjunction with experts in ecology and geographic information system mapping from the University of Georgia and NatureServe — that considers and ranks ecological values associated with forestlands in our procurement basins. Some of these ecological values include rare and endangered species, high biodiversity, intact forest landscapes, and resilient and connected landscapes. In addition, each of these areas is verified through on-the-ground visits and / or satellite imagery.
- Our participation in the Wildlife Habitat Council’s Wildlife at Work program. We currently have WHC sites at a dozen GP manufacturing locations. These projects span from pollinator plots to blue bird boxes to longleaf pine restoration and on-going monitoring of gopher tortoise populations.
- The partnership between of our Quilted Northern Ultra Soft & Strong® brand and the Arbor Day Foundation to restore ecosystems by planting two trees for every one used to manufacture the product. Much of these plantings are targeted at wildfire and hurricane recovery across the United States. The Quilted Northern® brand is committed to aid in restoring forests and rehabilitating the habitats of endangered and threatened species in the process. As of 2023, we are responsible for the planting of over 7 million trees across 46 projects sites.
For us at GP, Stewardship encompasses the responsible management of our actions and the resources entrusted to our care in a manner that respects the rights of others. By “rights,” we mean everyone’s right to their own life, property, and equal treatment under the law. This is the basis of our Stewardship Framework, through which we help people improve their lives by providing products and services they value more highly than their alternatives. We experiment and innovate to responsibly create more value while consuming fewer resources. These resources include the natural environment which we rely upon for our raw materials, the processes we manage to transform them into goods and services, and the relationships we have with our employees and communities. That’s why we prioritize responsible resource management, where we work to ensure that our resources are managed to create value for GP and our constituencies. You can learn more about our commitment to stewardship in the Koch Industries Stewardship Framework.
Our stewardship report, Progress with Purpose, provides an annual update on how we’re doing.
The outdoors has been an important part of my life and my relationship with my family and friends. This summer’s trip has energized me while connecting me to the importance of our Framework and the progress Georgia-Pacific continues to make in being a good steward of the environment including driving conservation activities that leave more resources available to satisfy other needs in society.
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