Miele Canada supports forest carbon capture in two essential ways: new tree planting and the preservation of existing old growth forests. New trees take years to develop their carbon-absorbing powers, while mature forests are already doing the job. Both play an important role in our fight against rising CO2 levels and provide homes for a diversity of plants and animals. The Miele Forest projects seek to slow forest losses due to logging and development, as well as restore degraded lands with original native species trees. 

Improved Forestry Management - Coastal Temperate Rainforest Protection

The Great Bear Forest Carbon Project is located inside the traditional territories of the Haida Nation, British Columbia. The Great Bear project area covers more than 14 million acres and is within the Queen Charlotte/Haida Gwaii archipelago which is home to the largest remaining intact coastal temperate rainforest in the world, and rich with old growth forests.

The project aims to increase carbon capture and storage by converting forests that were previously available for logging to protected forests, thereby preserving, and increasing existing carbon stocks, reducing emissions caused by harvesting, road building and other forestry operations.

In addition to the carbon sequestration benefits, the project protects the western red cedar, which is known as the “Tree of Life” and many important habitats for organisms such as the Kermode bear, black and grizzly bears, and seacoast wolves. The project also preserves important coastal and freshwater habitats for marine life. 

Reforestation– Boreal Forest Restoration

The Northern Saskatchewan Tree Planting Project is located near Prince Albert and Canada’s Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan.  The project area consists of approximately 240 acres of privately owned lands surrounded by mature boreal forest woodlands. The original forest was cleared to create farmland but was found unproductive and later abandoned. 

This project aims to increase carbon capture and storage by restoring abandoned, degraded farmland back to original Boreal forests though the planting of native species seedlings and then protecting the area in perpetuity under the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, thus increasing the carbon stocks as the trees grow into maturity and the forest is re-established.

In addition to the carbon sequestration benefits, the project will provide forest habitat for black bears, elk, moose, white-tailed deer, wolves, foxes and even cougar.

The Miele Forest projects operate in partnership with LivClean, a top-ranked Canadian carbon offset retailer.

Coastal First Nations-Great Bear Initiative (CFN) is an alliance of Indigenous Nations on the North Pacific Coast of British Columbia—a region known throughout the world as the Great Bear Rainforest. The alliance includes the Wuikinuxv, Haida, Heiltsuk, Kitasoo Xaix’ais, Nuxalk, Gitga’at, Metlakatla and Gitxaala First Nations.

CFN was created based on a shared commitment and conviction that if a conservation-based economy is to succeed, our active and meaningful participation is essential. In recent years, the CFN has also emerged as a world leader in the sale of carbon credits. These carbon credits provide their Nations with revenue to support sustainable economic initiatives, such as renewable energy projects, eco-tourism, and sustainable fisheries. This revenue also supports social development within the communities, and helps to conserve the largest and most ecologically significant temperate rainforest in the world – the Great Bear Rainforest.

Bluesource is the most-established carbon offset developer in North America and specializes in leveraging environmental markets to generate value for projects with positive environmental impacts. The Miele Forest carbon offsets in support of the Great Bear Rainforest Carbon Project are managed through Bluesource and its strategic alliances.

Founded in 2007 to sustain a third-generation family farm in northern Alberta, The Carbon Farmer has planted and protected more than one million native trees and shrubs on conserved land. These projects create habitat and store carbon, addressing the major environmental issues of deforestation and climate change. The co-founders, husband and wife duo Brad and Rebecca Rabiey, finalized an investment from Bruce Croxon and Arlene Dickinson of CBC Dragons’ Den, following a successful pitch on the show in 2012. Together they are now completing projects across Canada and internationally. 

In order to illustrate the environmental impact of the Miele Forest projects, we have created a virtual Miele Forest to track our progress. After you have made a dishwasher purchase, we will send you an email with a unique code to track your contributions and symbolically name a tree in our virtual Miele Forest. 

The impact of the Miele Forest projects are tracked and made equivalent to three key metrics: trees planted, kilograms of carbon captured, and years of dishwashing neutralized. 

The British Columbia Great Bear Forest Carbon Project’s impact is measured in ex-post carbon credits with 100-year permanence protection backstopped by the Forest Carbon Asset Management System buffer pool. The project follows the British Columbia (BC) Forest Carbon Offset Protocol for Improved Forest Management and is tracked on the BC Forest Carbon Offset third-party public carbon-reduction registry.

Beyond our Canadian-based Miele Forest initiative, our global headquarters is fully committed to the battle against climate change. In order to make a further important contribution alongside other commitments, we have decided to become CO₂ neutral at all our locations from 2021 onwards. This refers to Miele's own emissions (Scope 1) as well as those of energy suppliers (Scope 2).