Timberlink’s ambitious sustainability efforts go hand in hand with the brand’s commitment to innovation, and are reflected through a drive to reduce waste and create new, more sustainable timber products. Here, one of the co-creators and driving forces behind Timberlink’s sustainability agenda, Dr Trevor Innes, talks to us about what attracted him to the timber industry in the first place, what’s changed since he started over three decades ago – and why this is a really exciting time to be a part of this space.
What is your background and what does your current role in the business entail?
I’m a mechanical engineer with a PhD in timber processing. I’ve been working with or in the timber industry for 30 years. Currently, I am responsible for technical matters, such as product quality and compliance, process engineering and technology deployment, as well as sustainability across the wider business. The latter, alongside environmental management, is a key area of focus in my role with NeXTimber, an innovative brand that marks Timberlink’s expansion into the world of engineered wood building solutions.
Three decades! How have you seen the notion of sustainability change in that time?
Forest certification didn't really exist in Australia before the early 2000s. FSC® Australia was established in 2001 and the first Australian Standard for forest management was released as an interim Standard in 2003, before being published as a full Standard in 2007. So, you can see our forest management practices have evolved significantly over a relatively short period of time. This is demonstrated by the high uptake of certification to forest management Standards we now have.
The safety of our workers has come to the forefront, and in terms of environmental sustainability, the environmental regulations have tightened up in a whole lot of areas – and the focus on carbon emissions and climate change has increased dramatically over the last ten years. Science and awareness, of course, have been around for much longer but in the last decade we've seen industry members start to have a look at their climate impact, and see what can be done to decrease it.
And along with that, there’s been a gradual evolution of the awareness of the various pollutants that come out of the manufacturing industries – and how those can be decreased. Similarly, the whole social engagement piece has also changed for a lot of industries – the concept of social licence to operate probably didn't have much airtime 30 years ago, but it's now critical.
But to me, it's always been a sustainable industry – trees grow and provide us with the only truly sustainable building material we've got.
Has a focus on sustainability always been a part of your career trajectory?
I’ve always had a green streak, this is one of the reasons I joined the timber industry as it’s one of the very few true renewable resources available to us. My role extended formally from technical to include environmental management and sustainability around 7 years ago. It’s an exciting time to be a part of this space – I'm really happy to see how the industry is advancing and I hope we can continue that good work and keep manufacturing sustainable products to try and make the world a better place.
How important is sustainability to your organisation? And how does this commitment manifest through various stages of product development and company operations?
Sustainability at Timberlink is more than just a policy; It’s really part of our DNA through our ownership model. Timberlink is owned by investment funds managed by New Forests, whose differentiator in their investment markets started out – and continues to be – their sustainability focus.
We see sustainability focus, commitment and performance as essential to the long term health of Timberlink and NeXTimber. This commitment is visible through our significant investments in both NeXTimber – providing products to lock carbon up in buildings – and wood-plastics composites, where our new facility in Tasmania will turn recycled plastic and wood fibre by-product into high performing products such as outdoor decking.
In August 2020 Timberlink became the first in this industry in Australia to set a science-based target to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions verified by Science Based Target initiative (SBTi). To solidify this commitment, the organisation has created a clear pathway to reduce emissions in scope 1 and 2 by 53% by 2030. Can you tell us about how this initiative came to be?
It has been obvious to us for a fair few years that we've got a responsibility to do what we can to minimise the carbon impact of our manufacturing process – it's all well and good producing material that sequesters carbon for the life of the building, but there's still carbon emitted in the process of manufacturing. So it was really important to us to see what we could do about reducing that.
SBTi is an international organisation that governs this area, ensures it's in line with the Paris Agreement targets to limit global warming to 1.5c – and verifies all the calculations behind the targets. So it was really important to us that we go through that process. There are still very few industry members worldwide who have verified targets. It’s probably fair to say we’re leading the sector in this space.
When we did the SBTi project, we did it as part of a broader industry-funded endeavour so that we would try to make it easy for others to follow our path. We worked with consultants to not only set our own targets, but to develop tools by which other industry members can – reasonably easily – assess their own carbon footprint and set SBTi verifiable targets for themselves.
For us, to make the world a better place it’s important that we not only do our piece, but also that we bring others along on that journey with us.
What are the company’s current priorities from a sustainability point of view?
In the last 3 years we have reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 27% – with a lot more in progress to deliver on our promise. We have substantial programs of work mapped out in the areas of greenhouse gas reduction, climate risk, community engagement – and providing our employees with a rich experience across all aspects of their employment.
What are Timberlink’s sustainability aspirations, goals and ambitions for the future?
As mentioned, Timberlink has set formal, verified carbon reduction targets for 2030. These will incorporate NeXTimber and achieving them is a key part of our sustainability plan. We track our sustainability performance across a range of key metrics each month and have calibrated those to the UN Global Compact 5-stage model, with the plan to achieve stage 4 in a couple of years’ time. Stage 4 is called Integrated Strategy, and signals a fundamental shift towards viewing sustainability as investments and opportunity rather than cost and risk, with sustainability underpinning innovation efforts, too. We also plan to build a robust community engagement model and are working hard to become an employer of choice.
