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palletcentral.com PalletCentral • March-April 2016 41 of the land mass in the US 1 . 54% of the forest is publicly owned with the balance held in the hands of private land owners. Canada has 860 million acres of forest cover of which 94% is publicly owned and managed with the remaining 6% owned privately 2 . While harvesting wood occurs under different types of land ownership, forest management is governed by federal and state/provincial regulations to ensure that forest resources are well protected for the future. The North American wood products industry is a world leader in sustainable forestry practices. Forest certification involves independent third-party assessment that companies are operating in accordance with the principles of sustainable forest management that value the socio-economic and environmental contributions of forests. The total size of managed forests in the US and Canada under the four internationally recognized forest certification programs used in North America is 500 million aces. This represents roughly half of the world's certified forests 3 . North American forestry management practices ensure that deforestation and other threats to biodiversity do not occur 4 . Wood Waste as a Resource Waste reduction has strong economic and environmental benefits. Many communities can expect zero waste when they shift from a "take, make and throw away" model to a circular economy where end of life materials are used to create new products. The wood packaging industry in North America has one of the highest rates of recycling exceeding other forms of industrial and consumer packaging such as aluminum, paper and plastic. Wood packaging and pallets at the end of life are re-processed and the resulting wood fiber is re-used in such products as landscape mulch, animal bedding, soil enhancements, and wood particle board or used in bioenergy. Wooden pallets are a success story in solid wood recycling in the United States. In 2011, the most recent year for which detailed data are available, an estimated 474 million pallets were recovered for recycling 5 . These recovered pallets were repurposed into recycled pallets or were processed into new wood fiber products with very low levels of wood waste ending up in a landfill. In Canada, industrial and consumer packaging handled by municipalities include such materials as plastics, steel and aluminum cans, glass containers and cardboard containers. Wood pallets and packaging are extensively reused many times over and recycled at end of life. Wood packaging is regarded as an insignificant waste issue due to the success of the reuse and recycling programs in place 6 . PC Nature's Packaging in Social Media • Twitter: @naturespak tweets regularly on news related items for wood packaging, forests, landfill avoidance, upcycling, recycling, etc. • LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/groups/8459749 keeps up with news and allows viewers to post and add to the ongoing dialogue. • Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/NaturesPak shares commercial or residential projects using pallets that are upcycled, recycled or reused. 5 Trends in the Use of Wood Products for Distribution Packaging Cooperative Agreement No. 11-CA11330142-13 Robert J. Bush Department of Sustainable Biomaterials Virginia Tech Blacksburg, Virginia and Philip A. Araman Research Team Leader USDA – Forest Service Southern Research Station Blacksburg, Virginia April 2014 (Revised May 2015) 6 State of Waste Management in Canada Prepared for: Canadian Council of Ministers of Environment, 2014