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.