Understanding Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI)

So unless you’ve been under a rock for the past four years, you’re familiar with the term Forest Stewardship Council or FSC Certification. The nickel definition of the FSC employs a few key points:

1.) That the logging, milling, manufacturing, and handling of paper is done so to protect the sustainability of the forest, the waterways, wildlife, and indigenous peoples of the surrounding area, and

2.) That every party that handles FSC certified stock does so to comply with very rigorous handling requirements. The SFI or Sustainable Forestry Initiative follows nearly identical compliance requirements.

Well then, what makes the two different? To start it should be known that some of the key differences are that:

1.) The FSC carries more brand recognition because of their successful global-marketing efforts. Though, I’ve been seeing SFI billboards on the highway lately.

2.) The SFI carries has significantly more options in both premium and low-grade sheets. This is because many of our North American paper forests are owned by small private forest owners, and simply, it costs far less to carry the SFI certification for these private owners.

As Acme is both FSC and SFI certified, I have no partisanship in either. To dig further into this, I was directed to International Paper’s, "Sustainability Update" (June 2007), which provided me with the graphic below (click on picture for a full-sized image):

As I always, I invite any further questions that you have about this topic. It’s certainly a big topic that I’ve tried to compress into a few short paragraphs.