Via
Environmental Leader, leading magazine and book publishers—Time Inc., the National Geographic Society, Macmillan, and Pearson—have teamed up with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) to hopefully spur interest in chain of custody certification for wood products—in this case, paper.
SFI Forest Partners says it will aim to make certification more efficient and accessible by providing resources for activities such as shared consulting expertise, group certification and audit coordination.
Publishers, like Time Inc., are committing themselves to using certified paper, but have run into a roadblock: a shortage of certified paper. So one
raison d’être of the new partnership is to help get more paper certified.
By the end of 2014, SFI Forest Partners aims to certify five million acres of forests to the SFI 2010-2014 standard. By the end of 2017, the program hopes to certify 10 million acres of forest across the United States and Canada. It will also seek to certify more small and medium-sized mills to SFI sourcing or chain-of-custody certification, SFI said.
The SFI Forest Partners Program builds on a pilot project in Maine that resulted in an additional 1.4 million acres certified to the SFI 2010-2014 standard. The Maine project also resulted in 100,000 acres of forest lands certified to the American Tree Farm Standard, SFI says.
About Richard Romano
Richard Romano is Managing Editor of WhatTheyThink. He curates the Wide Format section on WhatTheyThink.com. He has been writing about the graphic communications industry for more than 25 years. He is the author or coauthor of more than half a dozen books on printing technology and business. His most recent book is “Beyond Paper: An Interactive Guide to Wide-Format and Specialty Printing.
