An email was circulated today from FSC Policy and Standards Unit (PSU).  It further extends the deadline in for signing of the troublesome self-declaration document included in the FSC Chain of Custody standard  (Annex B of PRO-20-001).  As of today, the deadline is July 31, 2013 (extended from March 31).  The new deadline applies to a special exemption for US and Canadian companies that was issued last fall by letter. How long can this go on?  Nobody seems to know.  Is a fix in the works?  I...

Today I happened to stumble on a rather nice piece of writing about FSC and SFI certification from the perspective of a commercial printer.  I have no connection to these folks, but was impressed with their site. Please take a look: http://www.bassettecompany.com/environmental-insights/close-critical-look-at-fsc-sfi/

Last August I wrote a blogpost entitled FSC and the ILO.  It attempted to summarize and call some attention to a very strange, but important conflict that has arisen between FSC-IC and a group of (mostly) US companies over some apparently minor details of language in FSC documents. The issue boils down to this: The latest version of the FSC Chain of Custody standard requires all FSC-certified companies to sign a self-declaration statement (Annex B of PRO-20-001). The self-declaration document...

For quite a few years, a large Indonesian pulp and paper conglomerate called Sinar Mas has been everyone's favorite whipping boy in the ENGO community.  Sinar Mas does business under its more well-know subsidiary name of Asia Pulp and Paper (APP).  From my perspective, it has always been a bit hard to tell whether they were, in fact, an evil personification of all short sighted resource exploitation; or rather just a typical corporation trying to do business in a challenging corner of the...

A colleague who follows this blog sent me the following short piece.  I found it to be a thoughtful and interesting observation.  I have the feeling that this line of thought is not welcomed within the FSC staff group lately.  It should be. The real challenge is always to find a good balance between credibility and practicability for mainstream markets. If you ask lots of information, you might end up with a very credible system – but the high workload for the companies also means that no one...

January 21 was a travel day for me - on my way to Toronto for three days of technical training with colleagues.  I saw and heard snippets of the media coverage of the festivities in Washington along the way. One point of interest to me, and perhaps a small handful of the national audience, was the fact that President Obama took his oath and made his speech from a temporary platform constructed of lumber from an SFI-certified company.  The folks at SFI, Inc. had done some promotion of this, of...