Forest certification

FINLAND, Jan 25, 2011 - The international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) granted its unqualified approval to Finland’s redrafted FSC standard on 21st January 2011. The new FSC standard can be adopted once a three-month transitional period has passed.

Common ground on Finland’s national FSC standard was attained after lengthy negotiations between the three chambers of FSC Finland and various stakeholder groups. The meeting of the Finnish FSC Association approved the standard in November 2010.

From today, Nijpels Meubelen B.V., the largest producer of ready-to-assemble furniture in The Netherlands, will be using the PEFC label on its products. On 12 January it was issued with a PEFC chain of custody certificate, enabling Nijpels Meubelen to demonstrate that their products have been manufactured using timber that has originated from sustainably managed forests as approved by the PEFC scheme.

UPM has started testing the new Finnish FSC standard in company forests. With this testing the company wants to fully assess the costs and functionality of the indicators of the new Finnish FSC standard approved by the Finnish FSC association on 8 October, 2010.

Forest certification standards from 12 nations have called on the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to end its discrimination against wood and accept all credible sustainable forest certification standards.

The certification programs pointed out that wood is one of the best environmental choices for construction as long as it is from a responsible source, and that fiber certified to the 26 national forest certification programs recognized by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) meets this demand.