Natures Packaging® (March 2015)

Why Wood? Wood is Nature’s Packaging

Wood packaging is nature’s packaging – the sustainable choice. So naturally, it seems appropriate that a collaborative project to tout the benefits of wood packaging be named ‘Nature’s Packaging®.’

The project launched in 2015 by the Pallet Foundation, the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association (NWPCA), the Canadian Wood Pallet and Container Association (CWPCA), and the Western Pallet Association (WPA). By promoting the attributes of wood, developing educational materials, and providing sound research, Nature’s Packaging works to increase the use of wooden pallets and containers.

Nature’s Packaging is an ongoing project supported by the Pallet Foundation. It educates the procurement and packaging professionals about the sustainability of wood packaging. The website provides tools and answers to the most pressing questions about wood products and manufacturing on the economy and the environment.

There are official data numbers on wood waste as a resource, landfill avoidance, forest health, carbon emissions, and the environmental product declaration. In addition to research findings, Naturespackaging.org provides marketing tools such as customer handouts, which summarize key questions that can be downloaded directly from the website. There is also the carbon calculator, which allows a user to input the number of pallets reused, recycled, and saved from landfills per month and receive the CO2 emissions saved per month along with the equivalent amount of cars taken off the road. Popular tools like these provide your business with reliable data for your customers to make an informed decision about their choice for packaging.

The content at Nature’s Packaging is relevant, data-driven, and third-party verified. The research is readily accessible to educate and inform customers, packaging specialists, and packaging students of wood’s environmental benefits over alternative packaging materials. All of the research is available to share with your colleagues, sales teams, and customers.

Nature’s Packaging is an essential project of the Pallet Foundation, and it continues to evolve with additional support by NWPCA, CWPCA, and WPA. The campaign continues to provide the research tools that answer the question “why wood” and to highlights the importance of healthy forests, healthy markets, and healthy communities. We are growing twice than what is removed by our industry. We are planting significantly more to expand our forest cover. We have the potential to use even more. Nature’s Packaging provides a whole new area of opportunity for the wood packaging industry, and it gives us the tools to tell this great story.

Help us celebrate natures packaging!

Resources & Related Projects

There is no other commonly-used building material that requires so little energy to produce as wood. Thanks to photosynthesis, trees are able to use an abundant natural resource (i.e. the sun) as it captures CO2 in the air, combine it with water these plants get from the soil to produce an amazing organic material, wood.

We have a great environmental message with emerging tools that will drive the point home to a variety of audiences, and collaborative opportunities to leverage the power of this industry and our messaging. These are some of the tools below.

Groups like the American and Canadian Wood Council, American Hardwood Export Council, American Forest & Paper Association and groups in Europe like FEFPEB and CEI-BOIS (the European Confederation of woodworking industries), have also commissioned numerous studies that continue to confirm wood is good when comparing the use of wood to alternative materials.