Forest Stewardship Council
From Free net encyclopedia
Image:FSC-logo.png The Forest Stewardship Council is a non-profit organization based in Bonn, Germany. The Council's stated mission is "to promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world's forests". People interested in the sustainable consumption of timber, lumber, paper or other forest products can seek to acquire FSC-certified products. FSC certification is also sometimes used to demonstrate sustainable management of forest for carbon sequestration purposes.
This membership association was founded in 1993 and is funded by various businesses, governments,foundations and environmental organizations such as the WWF, as well as by accreditation fees. Major decisions are taken in a General Assembly, which meets every three years. Through consultative processes, FSC develops standards and policy for sustainable management of forests, and accredits certification bodies to assess candidate forests for certification.
Any timber company or other organization that wishes to become FSC certified and bear their logo must first contact an accredited third party representative of the FSC. Certification representatives then inspect the practices and maintenance of the forestry resource. The final step is to ensure that products made with lumber coming from FSC accredited forests end up with the FSC-certified logo; chain of custody certificates are used to track the products from forest to final point of sale.