Written by Will Novosedlik
It’s one thing to say you’re green, it’s quite another to do it. A lot of companies can make sustainability claims within their physical plant and operations, but the minute you step outside and look at the entire supply chain, whatever emissions reduction they have achieved within the walls of their factories and offices are offset by the carbon footprint of their supply chain and distribution.
That’s why Royale, as one of the leading household consumer brands in Canada, announced last week that all its tissue products are now certified carbon neutral by the Carbon Trust, a leading, independent certification body that verifies carbon footprints.
Sustainability is only as viable as the depth and breadth of the actions a brand is willing to take to back up its claims. A competitive tissue brand that appears to be basing its entire value proposition on sustainability is Bonterra, which uses paper packaging. Some of Royale’s products are wrapped in paper, and it is planning to expand that. But for Royale, this week’s announcement gives consumers a much more detailed look at the extent of the brand’s ability to walk the talk.
Royale will support the Carbon Trust announcement with an integrated campaign which launched on Apr. 3., according to Jennifer Lo, VP marketing of Irving consumer products. Irving owns the Royale brand.
“What’s really significant about Royale’s case is that, not only are we able to neutralize the impact of our emissions without having to buy external offsets, but we are also the very first company that Carbon Trust has ever certified to do it,” says Stewart Van Horn, corporate VP operational excellence and sustainability at Irving.
So how does Irving do it? Basically, by planting far more trees than it harvests. It’s critical to point out that had Irving not begun to plant trees 66 years ago, it would never have grown enough to earn certification in 2023. It has planted over a billion trees since 1957.
Royale decided to apply for Carbon Trust certification in 2021. It took the brand more than a year to study the entire life cycle from cradle to grave with enough accuracy. That process wrapped up in Q4 of 2022, and it took another quarter for Carbon Trust to review and certify.
Quantifying every part of the product life cycle was the biggest challenge. “Some of this you can measure directly, and for others you have to use global standards for estimating the impacts,” explains Van Horn. “And so it was necessary to study exact locations of where we produce, sell, move, consume and dispose of the products in each of those phases, from sourcing all the way to end of life disposal.”
In addition, the company uses advanced technology such as LiDAR – a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to generate precise, three-dimensional information about the shape of the earth and its surface characteristics – to measure the expansion of canopy across all 5.8 million acres it manages.
“It’s not a one and done,” says Van Horn. “With each year that passes, we will re-evaluate against the previous year’s carbon emissions in order to establish that we are still carbon neutral. We’ve got a commitment to maintain carbon neutrality through 2030 at a minimum, which is set within our guidelines for other sustainable goals that we have as well as within the mother company, Irving Consumer Products.”
Conservation is another important dimension of Royale’s commitment to carbon neutrality. At the factory level, the brand has reduced its emissions by 37% each year since 2008. It sets apart 23% of its acreage for conservation, which means the trees cannot be touched except for scientific purposes. These could be wetlands, old forest habitats, deer wintering areas or areas that are important to Indigenous peoples.
Lastly, Irving has invested $30 million in forest-based, peer-reviewed research since 1990. It has collaborated in this effort with McMaster University, University of New Brunswick and Ducks Unlimited, studying everything from deer migration to fish and water conservation.
Other environmental impact goals include getting 90% of waste diverted from landfill, reducing plastic packaging by 25% and reducing the amount of fresh water required to make tissue products by 25%, all by 2030.
