Trees are still needed to make ties.
That’s what Canadian National Railway has had to accept as it tries to green up its operations. There’s just no easy way to get rid of wood.
“We have not found so far a good replacement for ties,” Normand Pell-erin, CN’s vice-president for sus-tainability, told the Fields on Wheels conference Oct. 22.
“It cannot, at this stage, except in very specific conditions, be replaced by plastic or concrete. It has to stay as wood because it gives us the flexibility we need.”
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CN operates lines with many millions of wooden ties and has to replace 1.2 million of them every year. It’s the equivalent of cutting down 600,000 trees because one tree produces about two ties.
It’s a big environmental impact, but CN is attempting to eliminate any negative impact by planting as many trees as it chops down. The company planted 200,000 trees this year and hopes to plant 400,000 next year and 600,000 in 2015.
“We will have a zero footprint,” said Pellerin. “Every time we replace a tie we want to plant a tree.”
