Tetra Pak (tetrapak.com) is working with Kingfisher and IKEA to promote the benefits of legal, responsibly sourced, sustainable timber and clarify the role of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC™) certification in the delivery of these values.

Established in 1993, FSC is an independent, non governmental, not for profit organization that promotes responsible management of the world’s forests. Over the past two decades, the FSC system has been widely recognized for its strong multi-stakeholder processes and carefully defined social and environmental criteria for forest management. However, it has often been a challenge for businesses producing FSC-certified products to quantify and demonstrate the value the system brings to the better management of the world’s forests.

The two year initiative of the three founding members, Kingfisher, Tetra Pak, and IKEA aims to develop a methodology to analyze the impact of FSC certification, enabling businesses to understand what value they derive from specifying FSC certified timber and paper through their procurement policies. 

Dennis Jönsson, president and CEO of Tetra Pak says, “On average, our package contains 70% paper derived from wood fibre. Certification is important to us as it gives us the opportunity to make sure that we source from responsibly managed forests. This, of course, requires a certification standard that lives up to its promises. As a long-standing supporter of FSC, we are proud to be one of the founding partners of this initiative.”

The initiative is supported by the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) and coordinated by the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance (ISEAL).  It is independent from the FSC but is designed to be useful to the organisation, by providing a tool that shows the contribution it makes to the social, environmental and economic values of the world’s forests. The learning from the initiative will be shared with other certification schemes as well other sectors beyond forestry that are covered by more than 20 certification schemes who are members of ISEAL.