What is FSC?

FSC (Forest Stewardship Council ®) is an international, non-governmental organisation dedicated to promoting responsible management of the world’s forests.

It was founded in 1993 in response to public concern about deforestation and demand for an international wood-labelling and chain of custody scheme.
FSC® is supported by a number of environmental groups including; WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Woodland Trust.

How does the FSC scheme work?

Forests are inspected and certified against strict standards.  These inspections are undertaken by independent accreditation organisations, such as SGS, BM Trada, Soil Association and many others. These organisations are appointed by the Forest Stewardship Council and award certificates on behalf of FSC®.  In order to gain certification the forest must be primarily sustainable and environmentally well managed.

The forest management must also comply with strict human rights criteria.  This makes the FSC certification process unique ensuring that a forest is well managed both environmentally and humanitarianly.  Forests that meet these strict standards are awarded FSC certification. This allows all timber and timber products deriving from such forests to carry FSC chain of custody certification.

What is Chain of Custody?

In addition to forest certification, the FSC® system includes a certified Chain of Custody (CoC).  This is the means of tracking a paper product back through the supply chain to the forest where the fibre originated from.  It includes all the operations that take physical or legal ownership of the paper.  This means, a product that carries a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) logo can be tracked from forest to pulp mill, to paper mill, to paper merchant, to printer and onto the printer’s customer. Buyers can therefore be assured that the paper they are purchasing originate from well managed forest regions. Currently this is over 120 million hectares of FSC® certified forest situated in over 80 countries.

‘Click here’ to view FSC® Certificate.