Here in the Going Greenosphere, there is occasional skepticism about forestry certification labels, with which this blog can sympathize. It is the position of the blog, though, that such labels are imperfect, but better than nothing, and the goal should be improvement of the meaning, relevance, and reliability of the labels. So it was with some degree of consternation when the blog read a commentary by Michael Hermens, managing director of APP Timber, about a run-in he recently had with the “clash of logos” between the PEFC and the FSC:

I found last week an advertisement by a Malaysian company offering certified furniture using incorrect PEFC and FSC logos and sent a copy to both PEFC and the Rainforest Alliance (whom is our FSC auditor). The reason I do this is to alert both organisations on companies claiming to be certified but often are not. This happens a lot in China where the illegal use of trademarks seems to be common practice.

Okay...

Rainforest Alliance also came back the same day with a rather astonishing reply; “when a product is FSC labeled, marks of other forest certification schemes should not be used on the same product. Regarding this case, it’s not allowed to place FSC logo in the same position with PEFC logo. PEFC is FSC’s competitor in forest certification”. Surprisingly they did not even address the issue if the Malaysian company’s FSC claim was correct and instead their reply only focused on protecting their the use of their logo. The most incredible statement was that “PEFC is FSC’s competitor” which really blew me away.

One of course has a healthy respect for competition, but surely when it comes to forestry certifications the more the merrier? Doesn’t the fact that other independent organizations have certified the same material only make one’s own certifying authority that much more reliable and trustworthy?