Sustainability

Our vision for a sustainable future

We're working for a more sustainable future by investing in solutions that can reduce plastic waste while lowering carbon emissions throughout the plastics lifecycle. And our actions toward a low-carbon future go hand in hand with our goal of protecting the environment.

Driving change

We need dedication, education and investment in new, advanced recycling technologies that help to remanufacture more used plastic into high-quality new products, because even one piece of waste in the environment is too much.

By changing our approach to how we make, use and recapture plastic while emphasizing the value and versatility of a material that enables us to do more with less, we can create a lower-carbon and lower-emission future.

We're leveraging plastic manufacturers' knowledge and innovation so that we can bring about a more sustainable world.

We'll do it together

Thanks to our partners' in-depth knowledge and dedication, Making Sustainable Change is a force for progress. Together, we are working toward a sustainable, responsible, more circular plastics industry that delivers solutions for our communities, our country and the world.

CHOOSE PAPER FOR NATURE

Choosing paper and paper-based packaging helps us plant more trees, protect wildlife habitats and reduce waste through product innovation and widespread recycling.

CHOOSING PAPER RENEWS FORESTS

From how we source raw materials, to the ways we recycle and rely on recycling, to designing packaging with the future of the planet in mind, the U.S. paper industry is working hard to make and deliver products more sustainably.

Sustainable forestry is the backbone of our efforts, supported by communities with long histories—sometimes a century or more—of growing and caring for forests. We refer to regions with many productive communities as "wood baskets."

Paper is made from tree fiber, a resource that is renewable because trees can be replanted. Over the decades, sustainable forestry has evolved to encompass all the ways we ensure that forests stay vital and productive.

Family and private forest owners play a critical role in helping us create the products you count on every day. More than 90% of U.S. forest products come from privately owned land, much of which has been in the same family for generations.

SUSTAINABILITY IS A JOURNEY

As an industry, sustainability is what drives us. It's an ongoing process—one that we continually work to refine and perfect.

Because we know you have a choice.

Every day, we all make thousands of decisions. But it's not just the big ones that have the ability to make an impact. The choices you only thought were little are the ones that can often change the world— a world that needs you to act, and to act fast.

When you choose paper packaging, you choose not just to protect what's inside but to support the industry that has been a leader in sustainability since before sustainability was a buzzword.

Your choices plant trees.

Your choices replenish habitats.

Your choices can make you an agent of change.

CHOOSE PAPER AND PACKAGING AND BE A FORCE FOR NATURE

Just like your choices have the power to make change, so do ours. Click the articles below to learn more about how the sustainable nature of the paper and packaging industry contributes to a healthier planet, and how your choices can help.