The Challenge
At RYAM, sustainability is deeply embedded in how the company operates. As a global producer of high-purity cellulose specialties, its operations are inherently linked to natural systems and depend on responsibly sourced forest resources, strategically mitigated climate-related risks, and carefully managed water-intensive manufacturing processes. In response to these interdependencies, RYAM has established a broad set of sustainability initiatives spanning climate, water, and forest stewardship to support both operational resilience and long-term viability.
Despite these strong practices, RYAM’s 2024 CDP climate, water, and forest disclosures did not consistently reflect the full scope of its efforts or the scores they warranted. The core challenge was not a lack of action, but rather how that action was articulated, organized, and aligned with CDP’s framework. This is where Sustainserv’s work began.
Our Approach
To address the disconnect between performance and recognition, RYAM partnered with Sustainserv for the 2025 CDP reporting cycle. Together, they defined three key priorities to guide the engagement:
- Improve clarity, organization, and consistency across CDP disclosures
- Ensure that existing efforts were fully and accurately reflected in responses
- Align disclosures with CDP’s detailed scoring criteria and expectations
Strengthen the CDP Reporting Foundation
Sustainserv began with a detailed review of RYAM’s 2024 CDP responses, prioritizing questions that received lower scores to identify specific gaps in clarity, completeness, and alignment with CDP evaluation criteria. This process included revisiting prior responses, diagnosing root causes of weaker performance, and assessing opportunities to improve the organization and consistency across disclosures.
Building on these insights, Sustainserv developed a structured foundation for the 2025 submission. Where still applicable, existing responses were refined, standardized, and mapped into CDP-aligned draft templates. For areas requiring new or more detailed information, Sustainserv designed targeted data collection templates and information requests tailored to relevant RYAM stakeholders, enabling a more structured and repeatable disclosure process.
Translate Internal Practices into CDP-Aligned Narratives
With a stronger disclosure foundation in place, Sustainserv worked closely with stakeholders across RYAM’s organization to better understand the full scope of existing sustainability efforts. Through targeted information requests and direct engagement with teams across operations, legal, supply chain, and environmental functions, Sustainserv developed a deeper understanding of RYAM’s relevant workstreams in order to reflect those efforts as clearly as possible in RYAM’s CDP disclosure.
During this phase, Sustainserv bridged the gap between RYAM’s technical subject matter expertise and CDP’s disclosure framework by translating internal programs into clear, evidence-based descriptions of current practices. This process included replacing duplicative or forward-looking language with concise, action-oriented responses that directly addressed the intent of each CDP question.
This collaborative approach not only improved data quality and completeness but also ensured that disclosures accurately reflected RYAM’s current-state performance.
Apply CDP Scoring Expertise to Optimize Responses
Finally, Sustainserv applied its expertise in CDP scoring criteria to finalize responses. Disclosures were strategically structured to be complete, differentiated, and well-positioned to maximize scoring potential, ensuring RYAM received full credit for its existing initiatives and performance.
Rather than requiring new programs or commitments, this approach maximized the value of RYAM’s existing efforts through clearer, more effective disclosure aligned with CDP’s reporting framework.
The Results
Through this structured and collaborative approach, RYAM achieved measurable improvements across all CDP modules:
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- Climate: Improved from C ➔ B
- Water: Improved from B – ➔ B
- Forest: Improved from D ➔ B
These new results position RYAM competitively relative to global and industry CDP benchmarks, while signaling meaningful progress in the quality, consistency, and strategic alignment of its disclosures. By strengthening reporting foundations and enhancing cross-functional collaboration, the partnership between RYAM and Sustainserv ensured that RYAM’s full sustainability story was clearly and credibly communicated.
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