In past years, Adorn has had the opportunity to help Dogwood Alliance in their efforts to preserve our forests by involving our proactive clients (Way to go, guys!). We also get to stay informed on the issues surrounding our forests during the times that Dogwood Alliance's Campaign Director, Scot Quaranda, comes in to get his hair cut by Amy Grove, but we wanted to know more - we always want to know more! Scot agreed to an Adorn exclusive interview so we could really talk about this amazing organization and all that it has done, and is doing, to save our forests and improve our world.     Scot Quaranda   Scot explains how Dogwood Alliance originally got involved with Adorn: Scot: The first time we did a project with Adorn was when we realized that health and beauty companies, like Unilever and Procter and Gamble, who make a lot of the products that you buy at drugstores, were using a lot of packaging. We were working to get those companies to change; to use more recycled paper, to use less packaging overall, to really reduce, and to make sure that everything else that was used in the packaging was done in a better way. So, that's why we first worked with Adorn. Then we realized that the number one [culprit of overuse] is actually fast food packaging. Adorn was able to help Dogwood Alliance with their campaign to encourage KFC to change their practices towards packaging by having a box of postcards clients could sign that were eventually sent to the CEOs of KFC. There was also a pretty amazing kid named Cole involved in this campaign. He helped make a huge impact, you can watch a video about him here. Here are some examples of the creative media strategies used during the campaign:   On Dogwood Alliance's triumph, Scot explains: Scot: We first worked with McDonald's and convinced McDonald's to dramatically change their practices around packaging by increasing their recycled content and making sure there is no endangered forest in their packaging. The kind of big hold out was KFC - KFC owns Taco Bell and Pizza hut, they're a big signature company. We knew if we could move KFC, we could move anyone.  Dogwood Alliance has had success in greatly influencing the companies they have stood up against. They have also drawn a lot of attention to the importance of preserving our forests. It has been that way since the beginning. Just a mere four years after they originated in 1996, there was a Southern Forest Resource Assessment to look at the impact that the paper industry was having on southern forests. This was the first ever assessment done in the south and it was a direct result of the effort of the members of Dogwood Alliance. This assessment opened the door to all of the changes that Dogwood Alliance continued to make over the years. From transforming the way that companies like Staples and Office Depot treat their paper production to traveling all the way to Europe to tackle Biomass issues.    "Dogwood Alliance is about the people that make up our network," Scot says. "It's basically mobilizing the voices of the people of the region in order to make an impact," he adds. Making an impact is what they have done. These are the people that transformed the way that Staples operates around paper by writing letters, attending shareholders meetings, sending emails, and having days of action. One day they had over 200 protests in different Staples around the country. After that Office Depot and Office Max were quick to follow Staples' lead, not wanting to be outdone by their competitor.   The projects Dogwood Alliance is working on today: The Carbon Canopy Project: The basic idea is that 90% of the forests in the south are privately owned so basically, the future of our forests lies in the hands of literally thousands of small, private landowners and I think most of them want to do the right thing and manage them well or not manage them at all - depending on what their individual goals are. There's a lot of pressure to cut or to develop what we wanted to do is find a way where big companies who are buying those products from those forests actually have a way to invest in them being managed better. In this case, it was Staples and Interface Carpets who bought carbon credits from these forests as a way to pay those landowners to set aside the best parts of those lands to make sure that they're never cut and then make sure that the rest are managed to the highest standards of the forest stewardship council, which has a lighter touch on the land than the average forestry. They are able to measure, basically model, how much carbon will be stored in the landscape over a 3 year period.  Biomass: The new push is for big utilities to burn forests for electricity and the craziest part about it right now is that we're not doing so much of that in the U.S., but it's actually Europe that's buying most of our forests to burn. Basically, clear-cutting our forests, turning them into wood-pellets, sending them on big container ships, and shipping them over to Europe so that they can burn them in their mega-power plants. I went to Europe, I went to the UK, because the UK is the leading country that is doing that right now to meet with the department of energy and climate change. Then I went to Brussels to lobby the commissioner on climate change and the commissioner on the environment for all of Europe, as well as, met with a bunch of member of European parliament.    Do you think the trip was successful? Totally successful. I think we busted a lot of myths about, you know, people think everything is sustainable and certified with no problems. Now they know that there is a real impact from what they're doing and I think that bodes well for future policies that they'll send that hopefully will limit the amount that they're buying rather than dramatically increase like it's projected to.  For more information about Dogwood Alliance and how you can get involved, visit them at their website:www.dogwoodalliance.org