With the environment increasingly on everyone’s minds, Stora Enso Paper Division has launched its Sustainability Academy, a new initiative to bring insights into sustainability straight to their customers. Elina Skerfe, Senior Manager Sustainable Processes, and Magnus Deinzer, Senior Manager Sustainable Raw Materials, of Stora Enso’s Paper Division explain the benefits of the new program.At Stora Enso, it is well known that implementing sustainable business practices is the way of the future. Yet not everyone has access to the same information about just how to build a more sustainable business. That’s why Stora Enso Paper Division has launched the Paper Sustainability Academy, an interactive digital learning experience that will help enhance understanding of the sustainability issues for companies and provide a better overview of Stora Enso’s practices in this regard.
Magnus Deinzer, Senior Manager Sustainable Raw Materials, Paper Division, could you explain more about the goals of the Academy?
At Stora Enso, we have been improving our sustainability services to better respond to the customer’s desire for information. We also want to help them to fill in any gaps in their knowledge.
We launched the Academy earlier this year as we had noticed an increasing number of our customers had questions about what exactly sustainability means. Of course, there is a lot of discussion on topics such as CO2 emissions, climate change, biodiversity and the like, but we have noticed that we aren’t all at the same level of understanding when it comes to what it means, for example, to have a sustainable forest management program in place. As a front-runner in integrating solutions to these environmental issues into our strategy, we wanted to respond to this interest from customers and public stakeholders with a platform for competence building on sustainability matters.
What does the Sustainability Academy consist of?
The Sustainability Academy is a series of interactive modules covering important topical aspects of sustainability. The first self-learning module explains sustainable forestry and wood sourcing, providing comprehensive information on forestry, land use, biodiversity and chain of custody. A second module on climate change and CO2 will be released later this year.
For additional support, we have launched a sustainability page and the Paper Sustainability Hub, where our customers can find articles and other information addressing particular issues, such as wood sourcing and renewable materials.
Elina Skerfe, Senior Manager Sustainable Processes, Paper Division, who would benefit most from the Academy?
The Academy has been launched for the benefit of our customers. But you don’t have to be a customer of Stora Enso – anyone can access the modules, from students or public officials to NGOs, and there’s no special registration required. You can learn at your own pace about the topics that are of interest to you.
We’re living in a digital world and everyone wants to have access to reliable information online as well. Although we’re happy to have individual discussions with our customers to address their questions, with the self-learning training online, we can reach out to more people who might be interested in learning more about sustainability.
At the same time, for the customers, the module will offer a better understanding of the terminology we use when talking about sustainability. That means we’re all on the same page and our customers can make fact-based decisions when choosing paper products, knowing how to evaluate the level of product sustainability.
