FSC-Watch

SmartWood misled US local authority over FSC timberTags: USA, Certifier conflict of interest, Rainforest Alliance SmartWood

In the New Jersey town of Ocean City, controversy has been raging about the City Council's planned use of more than a hundred thousand board feet of FSC-certified rainforest timber. The City Council is planning to use the Amazonian wood ipe (pronounced 'ee-pay') for a major renewal of its sea-front boardwalks. Many local people - supported by the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club - are opposed to the use of rainforest timber, and have been asking the City Council to use more environmentally acceptable alternatives...[Continue]

What is the FSC certifying?Tags: Canada, Russia, Sweden, Poland, USA, SGS Qualifor, Soil Association Woodmark

One of the underlying reasons for the existence of this site is that it is difficult, or impossible, even for the FSC members, to pick their way through the relentless 'public relations' output from the Secretariat, and to know what is really going on within the organisation. For example, whilst we hear repeatedly about the expanding area of the Earth's surface under FSC certification, we never seem to hear about the complaints that have been filed about any of these certificates. We never seem to hear that, for example, almost the entire Indonesian NGO community has, for several years, been calling for a cessation of the issuing of any new FSC certificates in their country (and which has been completely ignored by a number of certifiers and by the FSC itself)...[Continue]

A Million Acres of Clearcuts and Pesticide Use "Certified" in Canada and MaineTags: USA, Canada, Complaints procedures, SCS

This article was submitted by Mary Pjerrou, Greenwood Earth Alliance, .com

The Forest Stewardship Council certification of nearly one million acres of the J.D. Irving company's forest holdings, its clear-cutting practices and widespread use of pesticides, in Canada and in the state of Maine, both by Scientific Certification Systems, (SCS) of Oakland, California, exemplify the abuses and failures of the FSC certification process that have made the FSC label an unreliable guide for consumers who want to purchase wood from well-managed forests...[Continue]

Certified destruction of California's ancient redwood forestsTags: USA, SCS

The following was submitted by the Greenwood Earth Alliance

We are appalled at the Forest Stewardship Council activities in our region, specifically in Mendocino County, California, where the FSC's certifier, Scientific Certification Systems, certified a program of clear-cutting (with the absurd stipulation of a 50 year phase-out), pesticide use (no phase-out date; and including the use of imazapyr, a persistent pesticide that violates FSC guidelines), species extinction, and continued depletion of 235,000 acres of once magnificent redwood forest, now owned and being logged by the Fisher family of Gap Inc...[Continue]

FSC and the nightmare vision of forestry in the USTags: USA, Rainforest Alliance SmartWood

This was sent by Jon Mohler, October 2006

The West Coast Green homebuilding conference in San Francisco in September attracted 8,000 attendees, most of them groping toward a solution to this problem: Forty percent of world industrial output goes toward construction. The United States, for example, consumes 27% of the planet's wood products, mostly for house construction. Most construction commodities receive little evaluation of their environmental impacts, and people at the conference were anxious for guidance.

Into the breach stepped the Rainforest Alliance (RA), headquartered in New York...[Continue]