HP Inc. has announced an $80 million pledge in support of its partnership with the World Wildlife Fund to address the impacts on forests of printing with HP printers.

The partners pledge to restore, protect or improve the management of nearly a million acres of forest landscapes (384,000 hectares), an area approximately five times the size of New York City. According to HP, nearly half of all global forests are under threat of deforestation and degradation, which represents a major risk to biodiversity, water, people, and businesses that depend on healthy forests. Recent research indicates that efforts such as sustainable land management and forest protection and restoration have the potential to contribute up to 30 percent of the climate mitigation needed by 2050 to meet goals of the Paris Agreement including limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The commitment will address seventeen million metric tons of paper used in both consumer and commercial HP printers over ten years and enable HP to make progress on its goal of counterbalancing forest resources attributable to non-HP paper used in its products and print services by 2030.

HP and WWF have partnered since September 2019 on biodiversity conservation, clean water and air, and climate resilience in Brazil's threatened Atlantic Forest and China's Fujian, Guangxi, Hunan, Anhui, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Hebei provinces.

"At HP, we understand this decade is critical for addressing climate change. Given the impact forests have on the air we breathe, habitats for wildlife, and the livelihoods of communities around the world, they are critical for human survival as well as material to our business," said HP chief sustainability officer James McCall. "This partnership is designed to help counterbalance every page printed on an HP printer by regenerating critical forest ecosystems globally. Forest positive printing has the potential to ensure a better future for everyone, everywhere."

"To truly solve the dual climate and nature crises, we need companies to go even further than their immediate supply chains," said WWF president and CEO Carter Roberts. "Solving these problems means taking responsibility for emissions and environmental impacts from the entire life cycle of a company’s products. By pledging to address forest resources used for paper outside its supply chain, HP is accelerating ambition for corporate climate and nature commitments. And by helping us pioneer the development of science-based targets for forests, HP is building a road map for others to follow."

(Photo credit: World Wildlife Fund)