Buyer's Corner

Example Policy

Most companies have a corporate environmental protection policy that covers their operating practices, as well as their purchasing criteria. The FPAC publication, "What Buyers Need to Know", also provides valuable guidance and states that an effective environmental purchasing policy should:

• Use clear language and provide the buyer with the greatest range of purchasing options.
• Employ nationally or internationally accepted terms of reference and avoid using expressions that are not well defined, such as "endangered forests". This is not a scientific classification and carries different meanings for different people. Using vague concepts can place unintended obligations on buyers if these concepts are broadly defined in the future.
• Ensure environmental requirements give a company purchasing choices. Specifying a particular label or certification can limit a buyer's ability to purchase supplies. No certification scheme can meet the demand for global wood products, and buyers risk not being able to meet their needs by having exclusive criteria.
• In keeping with internationally accepted principles of free trade, purchasing policies must be non-discriminatory and transparent. In the early days of certification, some buyers committed themselves to only one type of certification standard. Since then, numerous credible standards have been developed, and exclusive certification policies have been recognized as counter-productive as one certification standard alone cannot meet the global demand for wood products.

An example of a Policy

To ensure that wood and paper products are coming from renewable sources, we will give preference to suppliers who subscribe to sustainable forestry management and independently verified certification programs.

Certified forest products are those materials that originate in forests that have been independently audited and certified by a credible, independent third-party as being well managed according to nationally or internationally recognized principles. It will incorporate, without being limited to, the following objectives:

• conservation of biodiversity;
• conservation of soil and water quantity and quality;
• maintenance of contributions to global ecological cycles;
• protection of a representative network of forested areas;
• regulation of harvest levels with regard to long-term productivity;
• continual improvement;
• integration of timber and non-timber values

Examples of credible certification programs include:

• the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) Sustainable Forest Management Standard;
• the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification program;
• the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 EMS program; and
• the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) by the American Forest and Paper Association.

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