Life on Land

With its new Fall 2017 collection, global outdoor lifestyle brand Timberland strives to leave a lighter footprint and bring great-looking, responsibly-made product to consumers around the globe. From everyday packs made with recycled polyester linings to its newest eco-conscious boot inspired by the Earthkeepers® Original, Timberland continues to innovate across footwear, apparel and accessories.

Domestication of forest products that are overharvested in the wild is expected to have two types of benefits: help with protection of the remaining wild resource; and provide income for local producers. Both claims are more easily stated than substantiated and may partially contradict each other.

At PANDORA Production Thailand, waste is seen as a resource. In 2016, 86% of the waste produced by its crafting facilities was reused or recycled. The dedicated effort put into the company’s waste management has now been rewarded by the Department of Industrial Works in Bangkok, Thailand.

Catalpa is a hard tree to overlook. Trumpet-shaped flowers herald its awakening for the summer and are soon followed by some of the largest leaves in the northern hemisphere. Elephant ears would not be too far off the mark for their description. Finally come the seed pods — bean-like in shape draping the tree like green tinsel.

As part of the Zero-Landfill Initiative, Teton County is making great inroads with new composting waste removal efforts. The Zero-Landfill Initiative is a collaboration between Subaru of America, Inc., National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), the National Park Service (NPS) and park concessioners to reduce the amount of visitor-generated waste that national parks send to the landfills. Collaborators spent the summer targeting the one material that is believed to comprise up to 40 percent of Teton County’s waste stream - food. Capturing and composting non-edible food waste is the next major step in the County’s efforts to significantly reduce waste going to landfills.

With all the false claims about “fake news” and verifiable lies being proffered as facts by the president and others, it’s quite refreshing to be reminded that there is still some fantastic journalism taking place in this country. This week on Sea Change Radio, host Alex Wise speaks to Desert Sun energy reporter Sammy Roth about his investigative piece on the Imperial Irrigation District (IID).

Roberta Rogers spends her workdays concerned about her customers and how she can help them with their loans. But on a summer day outside of her office in Minneapolis, the Wells Fargo underwriter was worried about the dwindling population of bees and how she could help them avoid extinction.

I’m not quite sure humanity has developed the ingenuity yet to design and engineer such a craft. But fortunately, I have good news!

Our forestry team recently returned from the 2017 Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) General Assembly (GA), which took place this year from October 8-13 in Vancouver, Canada. It was an exciting gathering, attended by more than 700 FSC international members, including forestry companies, NGOs, a wide diversity of wood-based product manufacturers, and more. Moreover, it was the FSC’s first North American-held General Assembly since 1993, a treat for those of us headquartered on this side of the pond.

Did you know that the forest products industry employs nearly 2.7 million workers in the U.S.? Or that large, uninterrupted forests are habitat to 60% of the U.S.’s at-risk wildlife? Did you know that the security of America’s forestland has undergone a dramatic shift in the last 30 years?