Environmental impacts and aspects in the forest industry: What kind of picture do corporate environmental reports provide?

Despite its good environmental track record, the Finnish forest industry nonetheless causes harmful environmental impacts. This paper studies corporate environmental reports within the Finnish forest industry to determine the environmental performance of the industry at large. Fifteen years of environmental reports from the three biggest Finnish forest industry companies are analysed. The majority of these reports focus on inputs needed for production (especially energy) and unwanted outputs (especially air and water emissions) in the industry. The environmental impacts in areas of the industry taking place outside of mills, however, are less often reported and appear to be less important to the companies. This paper makes five contributions to the literature: First, the forest industry's reporting, as a less researched field, is studied in detail. Second, the forest industry's environmental reporting is diverse, comprised of multiple indicators and units of measurement. Third, the energy indicator reporting is both established and diversified. The diversity makes the reports as a weak source of comparison of environmental performance. Fourth, the case companies seldom report the environmental performance of their supply chains. Fifth, while the prior literature has analysed multiple environmental impacts of the forest industry, the case companies report on very few of them. The paper concludes by stating that future environmental reporting should especially address supply chains and multiple environmental impacts caused by the industry.