you see all the logs piled up, and there s a whole truckload to add to them here. there he goes, he s turning in. and straight onto the weigh scales. and you can see, welcome to drax meadowbank. you very publicly say that you avoid damage or disturbance to high carbon forests. there is no way you can make that statement. that s a lie. but we re not taking whole trees. we take the sawdust. no, no, you are. ..from the sawmills. i saw the truck with whole trees going from primary forest that had just been destroyed to your pellet plant. so let s talk about the business model for drax. no, no, can wejust engage with what i ve seen? you re saying you don t destroy primary forests but how are you not destroying primary forests when you take trees from primary forest that s been destroyed? so we take sawdust from the sawmills. our business model is not built around taking whole trees from forests as you described.
cut down primary forest. our business model is based on, you know, using the materials other companies like the sawmill sector cannot use. where we have those logging licences, that same rule applies. right, so you are logging primary forests? we re not logging primary forests. you are, because you bid for the licence to log the primary forest, you won the licence to log the primary forest, you cut down the primary forest and then you paid the wood duties on the primary forest you d cut down. the important thing is that we didn t use that material. the material from that area went to sawmills to make lumber. we took the sawdust, which we would have done anywhere else in the world, and in that particular case, because of the distances involved, we didn t take the slash.
drax gets 20% of its wood from canada. but it says it avoids damaging primary forests and that the pellets it produces are made using leftover material from local saw mills. 80% is sawdust from sawmills. the last 20% is from well managed, well regulated forests which are only harvested for timber, and we take the bits of the tree which cannot be used for lumber because it s too small, it s diseased, it s hollow. and that material would have been left on the ground to decay, or in many cases in british columbia, burnt anyway. if it s genuine waste, it can make environmental sense to burn wood for electricity. drax does use sawdust and waste wood from the timber industry. but we don t think that s all the company turns into pellets.
A renewed joint forest management agreement supports Alberta’s Recovery Plan with hundreds of stable jobs and secure, long-term wood fibre access for forest companies.