Stora Enso announces regenerative goals

By adopting a regenerative stance, Stora Enso is shifting its sustainability goals from minimising negative environmental impact to becoming a net positive contributor (recycling and removing more CO₂ from the atmosphere than it emits and enhancing biodiversity) within the defined focus areas of climate, circularity and biodiversity by 2050.

Being regenerative means providing renewable and fully circular products and solutions that help reduce climate impact and support biodiversity restoration.

“As a renewable materials company, our core business is about offering solutions to sustainability challenges,” said Annica Bresky, Stora Enso’s president and CEO. “To balance staying within planetary boundaries and securing economic and social progress, the world needs a transformation away from fossil dependency and a linear economy. With this commitment Stora Enso aims to be a leading actor in driving the transformation towards a biobased circular economy. We will be transparent with our progress, taking a science-based approach, to offer regenerative solutions that not only mitigate environmental impact, but restore and rebuild.”

Stora Enso is also committing to new 2030 targets for its key sustainability priorities: climate change, biodiversity and circularity.

With its updated science-based targets, Stora Enso commits to reducing absolute scope 1 (direct fossil CO₂e emissions from production) and 2 (indirect fossil CO₂e emissions related to purchased electricity and heat) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from operations by 50% by 2030 from the 2019 base-year, aligned with the 1.5-degree scenario.

Stora Enso also commits to an ambitious target to reduce scope 3 (emissions from other sources along its value chain) GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 from the 2019 base-year. The science-based targets have been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, a partnership between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

As part of its new ambition, Stora Enso commits to achieving a net-positive impact on biodiversity in its own forests and plantations by 2050 through active biodiversity management. A set of actions towards 2030 has been developed and initiated to improve biodiversity on species, habitat and landscape levels.

“Stora Enso uses its own forest in Sweden as a development platform for enhancing biodiversity,” said Jari Suominen, executive vice-president, forest division at Stora Enso.

“We will, for example, increase the share of broadleaved trees and the amount of dead wood. Continuous cover forestry will be tested to evaluate its impact on biodiversity and forest growth in areas suitable for this method. Furthermore, Stora Enso will unify and expand performance evaluations that assess the quality of our work in Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Baltics in order to enhance biodiversity.”

Stora Enso says its work will be supported by a science-based monitoring programme and more than 15 indicators tracking progress on the species, habitat and landscape levels. During 2022 Stora Enso will start to share data on its progress through a new online reporting tool and support forest owners with enhanced biodiversity services. As a global renewable materials company, Stora Enso also aims to improve biodiversity globally, even beyond the forest sector, through knowledge sharing and active participation in formulating new policies and standards.

Stora Enso’s circular economy target outlines the commitment to transparent and circular material flows that help minimise waste and combat climate change. The interim targets for this include achieving 100% recyclable products by 2030. Flagship projects focused on infrastructure will help drive recycling at scale. This involves engagement along its value chain and new circular business models.