Two weeks ago, we offered some general observations on the major revision that the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is conducting of its family of standard documents.  This is an important process for a number of reasons.  If you are certified to any of the SFI standards, this revision will update the ‘ground rules’ that define your certification in the years ahead.  If you are certified to one of the other standards (FSC or PEFC), this is still important to you, because these programs...

One of our little consulting business' best features is the opportunity, over more than 12 years, to interact with the remarkable and diverse collection of colleagues, clients, and friends who share our interests.  Forest land management – where our roots run deep – is still an engaging and fascinating discipline.  But the business of wood product certification is far, far more diverse.  When we reflect on all connections that we have made, while helping folks with their certification...

A wise person once said that "the world is run by those who show up."  We agree and always encourage anyone with a stake in the forest product certification standards to make themselves heard when updates and revisions are on the table.  Most of the new opportunities for involvement have come from FSC and PEFC.  Today, however, we're writing about the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) Program. If your company is certified or otherwise involved in the SFI program, you should be paying...

We are watching an important new initiative by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) that promises to disrupt and complicate the Chain of Custody (CoC).  The proposal is to revise the CoC certification program, inserting a novel set of new requirements – the “FSC Core Labour Requirements” – into its main standard.   The result, we fear, could be a disaster. As is common with FSC, this topic is not a new one.  Members of the social chamber have advocated for years that social welfare indicators...

In our busy day-to-day world of work and business, it is natural to take certain things for granted. Things like honesty, fairness, professionalism, and business ethics.  Here at MixedWood – in our strange little world of certification consulting and auditing services – it is no different.  We assume that most of the folks we interact with are “doing the right thing”, and most of the time that’s true.  Once in a while, though, it’s not.  And those exceptions can come as a bit of a shock....

Among the wood product practitioners who gathered at the recent FSC-IC membership meeting in Chicago recently, the most pressing issue – by far - was the ongoing implementation challenge presented by the new National Risk Assessments in the USA and Canada. MixedWood has been deeply engaged in the details of this for months and we shared some of our recent work in our “rubber hits the road” post on November 2.  One thing we were not able to provide (because it wasn’t ready yet) was an update to...