Celebrating Earth Day, 2016!

Watch our Earth Day 2016 video below to see our environmental conservation, and reductions in fuel, water, energy, emissions in action at a variety of J.D. Irving, Limited companies. 

At JDI, more than 150 forest professionals care for healthy, environmentally certified, well-managed forests. Watch video of JDI Forest Products Value Chain here.

In the forests we care for, our voluntary and award-winning Unique Areas program is conserving over 1150 sites in Canada and the US - that includes habitat for plants, birds and mammals.

Did you know… JDI planted 20 million trees last summer!

Our tree planters are very good at what they do. In fact, they set a new world record this past summer! We planted 53,000 trees in one hour - the previous record was set in India in 2012 with 40,000 trees. Watch video of tree planters breaking the world record here.

In total, JDI has planted over 940 million trees since 1957. That’s a national record in Canada!

Did you know… During its lifetime, a growing tree will absorb up to 1 tonne of carbon dioxide.

Over the next 50 years, JDI woodlands and forest products operations will be a net sink for carbon – absorbing over 92 million tonnes of CO2 – that’s the equivalent of 18 million cars off the road for an entire year! Watch video of JDI Carbon Sequestration study with UNB here.

Every day is Earth Day

In the past year:

Conservation

• We increased our voluntary conservation areas to 1182.. JDI’s biodiversity strategy encompasses research, training, and the application of technology to ensure that our forestry operations meet our biodiversity objectives. JDI’s international award-winning Unique Areas Conservation Program has grown from 29 sites in the 1980’s to over 1150 sites in 2015. 

Reduced fuel, water, energy, emissions in 2015

• New Brunswick Maine Railways, using GPS and real-time fuel monitoring reduced fuel consumption by 770,000 litres.

• Midland Transport reduced their total C02 emissions by 1,143 tonnes.

• Fuel savings initiatives for Atlantic Towing totalled 1.1 million litres.

• Sunbury reduced fuel consumption by 428,000 liters of fuel. 

• Our new Kent distribution centre operates at over 25% below our previous energy consumption in our other distribution buildings.   

• Total reduction for all 42 Kent Stores is 600,000 tonnes greenhouse gasses each year. 

• We’ve reduced water use in our forest products manufacturing by 3,501,561 cubic meters – that’s more than 1400 Olympic-size swimming pools - of water since 2012.