Our Green Planet

Wood-Mizer's "Our Green Planet" won two awards at a United Nations film competition. As a part of the UN’s ’17 Goals’ program, the competition was an opportunity for companies and NGOs to submit films about how their organizations were contributing to the elimination of poverty and helping the environment. 27 corporations and NGOs submitted videos to the competition. Wood-Mizer won Third Place overall, in addition to winning the ‘People’s Choice’ award.

Our Green Planet

Our planet. Our green planet. It may not be like this forever. It will be green only while our forests last.

Forests - a resource that we all have. Responsibly managed forests are one of our most renewable resources. It’s a resource few benefit from, but not the poor. What can one person do?

REDUCING POVERTY IN ZAMBIA WITH ONE SMALL SAWMILL

“I realized that we have all of this scrap pine here in Zambia and it’s being burned, they throw it away, nobody wants it, it’s just destroyed. Now, we have very poor people and so instead of harvesting the trees, they’re making charcoal. Now we are destroying the forest. It isn’t a matter of do we want forests or not, it is a matter of people are going to eat, they are going to live, can we do it in a sustainable way or are we going to go for pillage and destruction.” – John Enright

Across Africa, whole trees – worth thousands of dollars are converted into charcoal to be sold for pennies. Because they need to feed their families today.

CONVERTING ILLEGALLY LOGGED TIMBER INTO 146,000 SCHOOL DESKS IN THE PHILIPPINES

“When you use wood for fire, you’re just burning the house before it’s built. My mission is for the Philippines to have more forested areas just like 60 years ago.” – Dr. Dwight Eusebio

Tens of thousands of cubic metres (millions of board feet) of illegally-logged timber is being confiscated by the Philippines government in their war against deforestation. Instead of being wasted, they are processing the logs into desks and chairs for schools.

DIVERSIFICATION BRINGS PROFITABILITY FOR ENGLISH FARMER

Farmers face increasing difficulty to keep their family farms profitable.

“A hill farm was not going to generate the income that we as a family required. Suddenly, you can turn your aspects to timber.” – Henry Brown

“What can we do with our scrap, and so it came to me that bee hives are a pretty simple thing that we could make. We have 33,000 bee hives right now, and we have 5,500 villagers who are in the beekeeping work.” – John Enright

“I really felt very sad when I saw more than 100 timbers already rotten exposed in the environment. If you can only convert that into something useful like chairs, why not.” – Dr. Dwight Eusebio

“Yes, I mill timber, but I also have a love for trees.” – Henry Brown

Henry Brown is still running his farm and sawmill.

More than 50,000 beehives are now providing additional income for their owners.

After six years of processing illegally felled trees, more than 140,000 chairs have been produced.

One machine can make a difference.