Donna Kopecky of LP Building Solutions walks through the company's emerging ESG strategy, from scope 3 baselining and a commitment to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures to diversity and inclusion work and business partnerships with Indigenous nations. She also covers an environmental product declaration and lifecycle assessment for LP's siding, a new GIS tool that flags species at risk on forestland before purchase, and growing supply chain accountability.
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Sara Gutterman: Corporate sustainability has changed over the years, and obviously the flavor of ESG today is a little different. But can you just tell us about kind of the evolution of LP's sustainability strategy, or we're just on the cusp of developing our ESG journey? But I would say we have a strong foundation in sustainability, and it's now trying to shape that into our path going forward, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's product innovation.
00:00:38:20 - 00:00:55:18
Sara Gutterman: We're collecting a lot of baseline information now to help us get further ahead in the climate space. And we're just getting there now, and we're developing all the baseline information that we need to help inform what those targets are going to look like going forward into the future. Can you tell us about any of your current ESG initiatives?
00:00:55:18 - 00:01:21:26
Sara Gutterman: What are you most excited about? We have an executive council, and then we also have an ESG task group internally, and we've all kind of rallied around the need for developing more information so we can develop our climate strategy going forward. We've collected information on a scope three. We're ready to launch that here soon. And then we've also committed to the task Force on Climate related Financial disclosures.
00:01:21:28 - 00:02:09:29
Sara Gutterman: So we're launching our assessment here. We've just completed it. And so we're really excited to share with our stakeholders all about what we've learned relative to climate risks and opportunities and how that's material to the company. So that's that's one aspect that's climate. The second would be our DNI initiative. And seeing how that has come to fruition over the last year or so, the company has come out and and made a pledge with regards to their call to action on DNI and really putting the efforts forward to to try and identify how we can be a more diversified organization, more inclusive organization, and provide equal opportunity to a number of our, you know, obviously our
00:02:09:29 - 00:02:47:17
Sara Gutterman: employees, our customers and our suppliers. Right. Part of that process, which is what I'm really excited about, is the work we're doing with indigenous nations. We are now working collaboratively with a number of different communities to develop business agreements, looking to source supplies from their indigenous on the companies, having conversations with different nations to find opportunities where we can build capacity in their communities as well, but then also using their expertise and knowledge to teach us because there's so much we don't know.
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Sara Gutterman: Right. Are there any specific.
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Donna Kopecky: Initiatives that you have that are addressing getting to net zero energy, water, carbon and or waste that you can speak to?
00:03:01:06 - 00:03:47:14
Sara Gutterman: We worked with a with a great group and their climate team, and we essentially launched 15 different workshops across our organization and talked to our people, our leaders, really about what they believe are our greatest risks and what they believe are our greatest opportunities that we can capitalize on from the carbon side as well. We were launching we've completed the smart side environmental product declaration, the lifecycle assessment, and we're really proud of that because it really underpins the notion that would products are, can be and are carbon negative and and do contribute to the solution of climate solution going forward.
00:03:47:14 - 00:04:06:27
Sara Gutterman: And this year we will be undertaking a project that's going to help us pull in the information we need from a baseline standpoint so that we can actually develop some some strategies and targets going forward in terms of how can we continually improve, how we're managing for both non-hazardous and hazardous waste?
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Donna Kopecky: What does the roadmap ahead the like for LP?
00:04:11:10 - 00:04:48:14
Sara Gutterman: We're just launching a new tool where our US foresters will have the ability to use this online GIS tool developed by nature, serve and be able to overlay a tract of land that they plan to purchase with information around the occurrences of species at risk. And that way, we can do one of two things. We can decide not to purchase that land, or we can work with the forest landowner and develop strategies to protect those features on on the landscape.
00:04:48:16 - 00:05:13:08
Sara Gutterman: So that really has enhanced the level of information that we have now at, at at our fingertips. Be able to be more informed as we managed, as we purchase those lands, and build much longer term strategies in terms of how we're going to manage that landscape over 20, 30, 40 years. And the other thing I would think that we really need to be mindful of is supply chain responsibility.
00:05:13:09 - 00:05:54:24
Sara Gutterman: So so we can be completely, you know, responsible as a company in terms of how we manage our lands, how we manage, how we manage our manufacturing process and and distribution, product innovation, distribution. But we also need to keep our suppliers accountable as our customers are keeping us accountable. So we know that over time, we need to be more mindful of how do we fold them into this process, how do we gain new knowledge and and support from our suppliers in terms of moving the whole sustainability initiative forward and being better and stronger and more resilient as a company?