RR Donnelley Plants at PSAU Bamboo Forest, Mt. Arayat, as New FEED Patron: One World, One Community

29 April 2016, Pampanga, Philippines. FEED joined RR Donnelley Philippines (Nasdaq:RRD)* to explore the basics of planting, seedling banking, nursery development and bamboo propagation at FEED’s partner site Pampanga State Agricultural University (PSAU) at Magalang, Pampanga. RRD’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program is built around the concept that “sustainability does not involve making a choice between being cost-effective and being conscious of environmental impacts. It integrates the two”.

Bamboo sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converts the carbon into plant fiber. If the bamboo were converted into building materials, e.g. housing, carbon can be effectively stored lifespan of a bamboo house – also functioning as an effective carbon capture and storage system (carbon sink).

Some evidence suggests that intensely managed plantations of clumping bamboo in tropical and subtropical climates produce significantly more biomass than trees. It is also known to sequester more carbon than the same area planted in trees.

Source: http://www.bambooliving.com/index.php/why-bamboo/carbon-sequestration

Aside from FEED’s regular scholarship provisions to PSAU, FEED conducts tree-planting sessions through out the year with individual and corporate FEED Patrons at its partners sites; further engaging in short/mid/long term practical research studies with its academic partners to explore carbon sequestration in terms of key indicators, data, targerts, and benchmarks specific to the Philippines for monitoring and carbon sequestration purposes.

This CSR & team-building event was made possible by FEED Partner PSAU, under the Memorandum of Agreement covering the provision of:

FEED scholarship support to PSAU graduate students in Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries;
the establishment of a dedicated Climate Smart^ Nursery, for joint planting activities in the vicinity; and
the extension of 70+ different world bamboo species being research and propagated at PSAU’s bamboo forest.

^Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA): CSA aims to tackle three main objectives:

sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes;
adapting and building resilience to climate change; and
reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions, where possible.

Bamboo: “Poor Man’s” Carbon Sink

According to the Food & Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Bamboos “have been overlooked in the current climate change regime”:

“They are missing in the forests definitions of the Marrakech Accords (MA) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). They have been disregarded in IPCC Assessment Reports, and in current IPCC guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories. The fact that bamboos are botanically not trees but grasses, and that they have traditionally been considered “the poor man’s timber” may help explain these omissions. Other global forest definitions, such as FAO’s, include bamboos”.

Source: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/012/k6887e/k6887e00.pdf

*About RR Donnelley

RR Donnelley is a Fortune 500 company that provides print and related services. Its corporate headquarters are located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The company, legally known as R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, was founded in 1864 by Richard Robert Donnelley. His son, Reuben H. Donnelley, founded the otherwise unrelated company R. H. Donnelley.

RR Donnelley helps organizations communicate more effectively by working to create, manage, produce, distribute and process content on behalf of our customers. The company assists customers in developing and executing multichannel communication strategies that engage audiences, reduce costs, drive revenues and increase compliance. RR Donnelley’s innovative technologies enhance digital and print communications to deliver integrated messages across multiple media to highly targeted audiences at optimal times for clients in virtually every private and public sector.