Legality and Sustainability

What is actually required to ensure legality and sustainability of timber and wood-products used on a construction site? For many observers – some clarity! Sofie Tind Neilson from the Central Point of Expertise on Timber (CPET) provides the definitive answer.

Firstly, it is necessary to define what meant by ‘legality’ and ‘sustainability’ and secondly, traceability of the wood from the legally and sustainably managed forest to the construction site needs to be established. Not an easy task if you are not familiar with the legislation and forest management practices of the country where the timber is harvested. Added to that, the potentially very long and complex timber supply chains where the timber can be mixed or substituted with timber from unknown and potentially illegal sources. Having to chase every single wood product back to the forest source and verify that the forest was legally and sustainably managed could be an enormous task and in some cases very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve were it not for the certification schemes.

In the early-mid 1990s various initiatives to establish independent verification of ‘responsible’ and sustainable forest management emerged and third party certification schemes were established. Over the past 10-15 years the two international schemes, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes (PEFC have grown significantly and proven to be very useful, if not essential, tools to ensure sustainability of timber and wood products. The schemes’ certification bodies independently verify that a set of criteria to ensure legality and sustainability are met in the forest and that the verified sustainable timber is not substituted or mixed (or if mixing is allowed the non certified portion needs to be ‘controlled’) through the supply chain.

The UK government has a clear definition of ‘Legality’ and ‘Sustainability’ defined by a set ofcriteria. For the timber to be accepted as ‘Legal’ it is required that:

• the forest owner/manager holds legal use rights to the forest
• compliance with all relevant local and national legal requirements is ensured
• all relevant royalties and taxes are paid
• there is compliance with the requirements of CITES (The Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species).

To ensure ‘Sustainability’ it is further required that:
• harm to eco-systems is minimised
• productivity of the forest is maintained
• forest ecosystem health and vitality is maintained
• biodiversity is maintained
• certain social criteria are met including legal, customary and traditional tenure and use rights related to the forest are identified, documented and respected, mechanisms for resolving grievances and disputes are in place and the basic labour rights and health and safety of forest workers are respected.

Legality and sustainability were defined by the UK government in 2004 and did not initially include the detailed social criteria, but these were added in April 2010. CPET supports public buyers and suppliers in ensuring that the legality and sustainability criteria are met. One of CPET’s initial tasks was to assess if the available certification schemes FSC and PEFC met the sustainability criteria. Since 2005, CPET has been reviewing this assessment every two years to ensure the schemes continue to deliver compliance with the sustainability criteria at the forest source and traceability through the supply chain. The results of the 2010 review, which was recently published, conclude that both FSC and PEFC continue to deliver evidence of sustainability in compliance with the UK government’s timber procurement policy.

Though it is also possible to provide evidence of sustainability and traceability via other types of evidence (so called Category B evidence),compliance with the UK government’s timber procurement policy is most often demonstrated by certification under either the FSC or PEFC
schemes (Category A evidence) and certification is widely available in the UK supply chain. The certification schemes are very important for the implementation of the policy and enable suppliers and contractors to prove that the timber and wood products are from a sustainable source.

When you order and receive FSC or PEFCcertified products there are a few things you need to check to ensure that the product is actually certified. First of all, you need to specify FSC or PEFC products when you place the order. Unless you are sourcing directly from the forest, your certified supplier will hold a so-called chain of custody certificate. All certified suppliers have a unique certification code/number which you can find on a PDF or hard copy of their certificate or on the delivery notes and invoices and the format should be as follows: BMT-PEFC-23354 or SGSCOC- 12244. With the certification number you can check the certification using theschemes’ databases which are available online. Using the databases you can check if the certificate is genuine, that it is valid and has been issued to the company selling you the product.

Your direct supplier/subcontractor may have provided you with their supplier’s certificate, and
this may be OK, but you will not be buying a certified product so further information (category
B evidence) is needed to confirm the traceability is intact. It is also important to check that the
scope of the certificate covers the product you wish to purchase as suppliers often only have
part of their production certified. The chain of custody certification tells you that the supplier
can supply certified material, but the supplier can still supply non-certified products. The way to
ensure that certified material has been received is to check that the invoice/delivery note specifies FSC/PEFC under the product description.

CPET have summarised ‘How to check a certificate’ onto a one-page PDF ready to print off and hang on your wall where you get invoices and delivery notes in. Please find it on the CPET website www.cpet.org.uk. CPET will advice companies to implement a timber procurement policy and will encourage a reference to the UK government’s legality and sustainability definition and evidence of compliance when doing so.

For more information contact CPET on 01865 243766 or email: cpet@proforest.net
Searchable databases are available at: FSC: www.fsc-info.org PEFC: http://register.pefc.cz/search1.asp.