RESOURCE CONSERVATION

Paper-making is a resource-intensive manufacturing process and West Linn Paper is committed to managing resources wisely. We carefully monitor our use of water and energy to ensure that we're maximizing our efficiency - a practice that sustains not only our environment, but also our business.

Since our start-up, our primary focus has been on reducing water consumption and the waste material that we generated. We have been very successful - reducing our overall water consumption by nearly 20% and cutting our stock losses almost in half. We continue to look at new ways to conserve water and have added fuel and power to our list of projects to address the issues of rising fuel costs and concern over climate change.

In March 2006, the US Department of Energy visited the mill to perform a "Save Energy Now" assessment to work with mill employees to design a series of projects to reduce fuel consumption. Those projects, along with a few others implemented shortly before the assessment, have proved very successful - since the beginning of 2005, the amount of fuel required to manufacture a ton of paper has decreased by 17% and since early 2006, our power consumption has dropped by 5%.

In 2008 we'll be installing more air scouring systems in our filter beds to reduce both water and energy consumption. We'll be replacing the vacuum pumps on one of our paper machines with a newer, more energy efficient design. And we'll be focusing more of our efforts on greenhouse gas emissions - establishing a baseline to better understand our past habits and developing a plan to comply with anticipated reduction targets.