The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a non-profit association created in 1993 at the initiative of Greenpeace and other environmental groups, in order to stimulate and certify sustainable forest management from an ecological, social and economic point of view. The idea was to use the market to meet consumer demand - more and more sensitive to environmental and social aspects of consumption - with the offer of forestry producers, able to manage forests maintaining biodiversity and the ecological functions and bringing real benefits to the local community. To do this it was necessary to create a certification system that can put the final consumer to recognize products made with raw materials from sustainably managed forests by very well-defined and verifiable criteria.
The strenght of FSC standard:
The FSC standard is the only certification standard, which includes environmental and social practices of forest management.
The FSC certified forest operations are preceded by a thorough inventory of the forest and a management plan which is drawn up through a process of consultation with all parties involved. The cutting of trees is executed with care, and even after cutting the logs are being carefully processed. This approach helps to minimize impacts on the ecosystem and prevent social conflicts.
In the future, it will be possible to reach collection systems fully compatible.
The wood produced with this system receives the FSC label, a guarantee for consumers buying wood products in a responsible manner.
The future of FSC standard:
Already over 18 million hectares of forests in 30 countries are certified FSC. Even the World Bank has understood the importance of certification in order to conserve forests, setting the goal of supporting the certification of at least 200 million hectares of forests. Companies that want to meet the challenge of demonstrating that the market for wood products can be truly sustainable will find in FSC a valuable ally. |
