A few weeks ago, I was pleased to see this posting come across my twitter feed. The SFI program is promoting the fact that the speakers platform being constructed for President Obama’s second inauguration will be made of SFI-certified lumber. Pretty neat, huh?
Yesterday, I saw another, similar announcement (also via twitter). It turns out that the inauguration invitations are being printed on FSC-certified paper. Also neat.
I re-tweeted both posts when I saw them. I also tweeted a suggestion to both FSC-US and SFI. Wouldn’t this be a great opportunity to demonstrate collaboration and mutual respect by issuing a joint press release? As of this writing (about 24 hours after my last tweet) I’ve had no reply. Hopefully that means that Corey Brinkema and Kathy Abusow are on the phone working out the details.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we all got along a bit better? This seems like a small step in the right direction. Nothing to lose, right? If you agree, please drop a note to your favorite program – or even to them both.
Write to FSC at: c.brinkema@us.fsc.org
Write to SFI at: kathy.abusow@sfiprogram.org
Dan,
Your encouragement for us all to get along better is right on target. SFI, FSC, PEFC and ATFS all support good forest management and the use of forests as a renewable resource. When they fight openly with disparaging remarks, the real winners are the businesses producing plastics, metal, concrete, stone, glass and other alternatives in building and product design.
You and I have witnessed open hostility between loggers and mills, private consultants and public foresters, and now the “wood wars” between groups with the same fundamental conservation goals. Together we can all share in the elevation of renewable wood resources if we take the high road. The public, architects, general contractors, printers, corporate decision makers and other users of forest products will hear the message of good forestry from several sources. The mutually supportive bandwagon will serve our wood-promoting groups well.
We want decision makers to choose wood first. The question then is “Which program is best for me?” The message now puts the wrong question first, “Who can we trust among these fighters?”
Sometimes our short term conflicts result in marketing in reverse for wood products and good forestry as an environmental benefit. We have worked long and hard for decades to get to the place where forest resources are viewed, as they should be, as a part of the environmental solution rather than an environmental problem. Now that we are at the place where people are listening, let’s not send the wrong message.
Thanks for opening the discussion.