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Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) - explained
Forest Stewardship Council – Chain of Custody
Chris Fowler International is proud to be one of a small group of UK printers who have been accredited with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) – Chain of Custody.
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation. It is an association of members from environmental and social groups, the timber trade and the forestry profession, community forestry groups and other organisations from around the world.
The FSC runs a global forest certification system that includes two key aspects: Forest Management and Chain of Custody certification. By achieving the Chain of Custody accreditation Chris Fowler International can ensure that the paper on which we print can be traced from certified forests to you the Client.
This means that we can provide our Clients with paper that comes from forests which are managed according to internationally agreed principles and criteria of good forest management. This includes compliance with national legislation, respect for local people's rights, ecological integrity, economic viability, and the need for adequate planning and monitoring of operations.
Achieving this accreditation is part of implementing our social responsibility ethos. The FSC endorsement gives the paper we use a verifiable social and environmental quality and demonstrates how seriously we take the environmental concerns of our Clients and staff. It is our desire to work with all of our Clients to move them onto environmentally conscious, FSC endorsed papers.
The FSC system works by accrediting at two levels: forest certification and chain of custody control. It is this second part for which Chris Fowler International has been accredited, but the accreditation does not apply unless there has been no break in the chain i.e. all stages are accredited and all necessary procedures have been applied. Each stage is inspected and verified and annually audited, including Chris Fowler International.
- Forest certification involves an inspection of the forest and it’s management by an independent organisation to ensure that the criteria for good forest management are met.
- Chain of custody control ensures that each organisation in the chain including the printer, us, at the end of the chain, has met the FSC requirements. To be sure that your products are printed on trees cut from a well managed forest we need to know:
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- that the wood can be guaranteed to come from a certified forest;
- that only this wood was used in the pulp mill and the subsequent paper mill or mills;
- that it is this paper and no other that came from the merchant;
- and that it is this paper and no other that is used to produce your reports.
The chain of custody audit ensures that there is ‘clear separation or demarcation of certified and non-certified forest products at all stages, including forest sites, processing, shipping, manufacturing, and wholesale distribution stages’. This requires that Chris Fowler International segregates all FSC accredited paper from other paper, that it is clearly identifiable at all stages and that there is documentation supporting the incoming and out going products and the processes that control these.
Due to this accreditation, where Chris Fowler International produces reports for its Clients on FSC approved paper, the Client can, if it wishes, have the globally recognised, environmentally conscious, FSC logo printed onto its reports.
