NWF Teams with Lyons Falls Paper Company To Pioneer SmartWood Paper Production - Brief Article

National Wildlife, Feb-March, 1999

The success of Lyons Falls serves as an example for other pulp and paper mills that good business and environmental stewardship can go hand-in- hand.

Alan Calfee, NWF's SmartWood coordinator

The National Wildlife Federation and a small paper company in upstate New York made history recently when the world's first printing paper guaranteed to be made of wood from environmentally well-managed forests rolled off the company's machines.

NWF played two crucial roles in the event: It certified the New York manufacturer, Lyons Falls Pulp and Paper Company, as the first paper mill to process SmartWood-certified wood, and it was the first customer for the new paper. NWF placed orders for 2 million pounds a year of the uncoated stock to use for inserts in its four magazines (including this issue of National Wildlife), as well as for direct mail brochures, catalog order forms, and the SmartWood newsletter published by NWF's Northeast Natural Resource Center in Vermont.

Since 1995, the northeast center has administered the Rainforest Alliance's SmartWood program in the northeastern United States, certifying more than 100,000 acres of public and private forest lands that produce timber while conserving wildlife habitat. SmartWood also certifies companies that manufacture wood products, including furniture, flooring and musical instruments.

In the case of Lyons Falls, certification guarantees that 70 percent of the virgin fiber in its paper comes from SmartWood-certified sources.

At first glance, Lyons Falls seems an unlikely candidate for such a manufacturing milestone. Located in the foothills of the Adirondacks 90 miles northeast of Syracuse, the company bills itself as "a small company in an industry of giants." With just two paper machines, one of them 103 years old, the plant processes only about 130 cords of wood a day at full production.

Yet Lyons Falls has proved to be an industry leader in environmental stewardship. It was the first company in the United States to make totally chlorine-free printing, writing and specialty papers, and it uses high-yield pulp, which requires fewer trees per ton of paper.

Attracted by the company's high-quality chlorine-free stock, NWF has purchased paper from Lyons Falls for the past six years and was anxious to be first in line for the SmartWood-certified paper. "If we can buy a product that is cost competitive and also manufactured in an environmentally responsible way, that's the best of both worlds," says Laura Hickey, NWF production director.

SmartWood certification of Lyons Falls grew out of more than two years of discussions between the company and Hickey, NWF SmartWood Coordinator Alan Calfee and northeast center Director Eric Palola. Because NWF was in the awkward position of both certifier and customer, the Federation hired William Holtzman, a State University of New York professor emeritus of paper science to conduct an independent assessment of the company. "This broke new ground in terms of evaluating a highly technical manufacturing process," says Calfee. "It's very different than certifying a sawmill."

"We give a tremendous amount of credit to the people at Lyons Falls for their leadership and persistence in making SmartWood-certified paper a reality," Palola says.

Already, the precedent-setting paper run at Lyons Falls is sending shock waves through the industry. "We've proved that certification is possible at a paper plant, despite industry complaints that it would be too unwieldy and too costly to track fibers through the paper-making process to make sure they came from certified forests," adds Palola.

By committing itself to using SmartWood-certified paper, NWF hopes to convince other publishers and major paper purchasers such as catalog sales companies to follow suit. "The visibility of this paper in our materials demonstrates to people that consumers have a choice," Calfee says.