Office Depot (NYSE:ODP), working with paper producer NorskeCanada and professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, has pioneered the industry's first independent chain-of-custody system for the sourcing of paper in North America. The system enables Office Depot, the 2004 winner of the United States Chamber of Commerce's Corporate Stewardship Award, to ensure that paper used in its printed marketing materials is "environmentally preferable" and establishes a new level of transparency in the process of paper procurement.

For Office Depot to consider paper as environmentally preferable, it must contain postconsumer waste (PCW) recycled content or certified content. Certified content refers to fiber sourced from forests that are independently verified as being responsibly managed in accordance with a recognized forest certification standard, along with an audited chain of custody tracking system that verifies the use of the certified fiber in the paper product.

"After more than a year of collaborating with our stakeholders, Office Depot can now track, measure and report the amount and type of environmentally preferable fiber used in our North American catalog and insert paper," said Tyler Elm, Office Depot's Director of Environmental Affairs. "By early 2005, Office Depot will be able to claim that its catalog and insert paper from NorskeCanada is sourced from responsibly-managed forests, certified in accordance with a recognized forest certification standard, and that no fiber from illegal logging entered the supply chain."

Office Depot will identify, track and report environmentally preferable fiber with the following three separate characteristics:

1. Responsibly-Managed: Virgin wood fiber sourced from forests that are certified by an independent third party as being responsibly managed in accordance with a recognized forest certification standard;

2. Responsibly-Procured: Virgin wood fiber sourced using procurement systems that require uncertified landowners to meet or exceed government requirements on their forestlands, including Best Management Practices where they exist; and

3. PCW-Recycled: Reclaimed wood fiber recovered from the solid waste stream of the end user of the original forest or paper product.

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