Click on the play button below to listen to our discussion.

Listen

In their interviews, they both made some interesting comments regarding the amount of energy required in the paper making process. Of course, because healthy forests store carbon, sourcing from responsibly managed forests, like those certified to the SFI Standard, can mitigate the impact of climate change. Both TIME, Inc. and NewPage are SFI participants and are committed to responsible forest management.

Rick also commented on the collaborative nature of the conference – something we advocate ourselves in sustainable forestry practices. We were all pleased to find shared goals and mutual respect. It’s a collaborative attitude I hope continues.

Guy Gleysteen, SVP of Production at TIME, Inc.

Rick Willett, President & COO at NewPage Corporation

Kathy Abusow, President & CEO at SFI

During the traceability panel we also heard from Arlin Wasserman, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship at Sodexo. Sodexo employs 350,000 people worldwide and serves some 50 million people a day in 85 different countries. They provide facilities management, energy management and food service to corporations, hospitals, schools and government buildings. Sodexo is in a unique position to influence environmental practices and they stressed the importance of transparency, traceability and certification. And Arlin has a unique perspective on it – as you can see in our interview with him below.

Arlin Wasserman, Vice President of Corporate Citizenship at Sodexo

We were also able to spend some time with Rich Lechner, Vice President of Energy and Environment at IBM. IBM has had a corporate sustainability agenda since 1971. You’ll find a few similarities between some of IBM’s best practices and the requirement we have for independent third party auditors (it has to do with management, measurement, monitoring and transparency through third party verification). In our conversation, we talked about how sustainability fits into IBM’s corporate and business objectives, how IBM supports sustainable forestry and lessons learned re: sustainability. The highlights of this conversation are in the video below

Rich Lechner, Vice President of Energy and Environment at IBM

Along with blog entries, we’ll post some video and podcast interviews conducted by SFI with some other attendees and thought leaders so you can hear, first-hand, their perspectives.

The first interview was with Chuck Leavell. He’s the Director of Environmental Affairs for a new website, Mother Nature Network, MNN.com (the environmental website “not designed for scientists or experts,” but for “the rest of us, the regular person who wants information written and created in a way that everyone can understand”). Chuck is also a tree farmer and keyboardist for the Rolling Stones. He’s attended Brainstorm Green in the past, and had some interesting things to say about why he’s back, sustainability in general and his new website. I especially like his comments about forest certification and the need for “mutual recognition” by the various standards.

Click on the play button below to listen to the podcast Listen to the podcast

Day 1 began with a panel discussion on the Obama Administration’s climate plan. Panelists included Fred Krupp from the Environmental Defense Fund, David Krone from NRG Energy, Bill Bumpers from Baker Botts in Washington, DC, Michael Splinter from Applied Materials and Jim Rogers from Duke Energy. The discussion ranged from cap and trade to solar & wind vs. fossil fuels to the most recent stimulus package.