By buying PEFC-certified products, we can all help support local communities to continue looking after our forests. Learn more about the importance of supporting sustainable forest management from our CEO Ben Gunneberg!
“Although we have already been reaching out to over a million people to safeguard the forests and to manage them in a sustainable way, we do have a problem. When the shoppers in the shop see a wooden product, they still think that they are participating in the destruction of trees,” he explains.
“They are not realising that by buying these products they’re helping local communities and they’re safeguarding those forests that they love.”
“If we don’t buy the wooden products, if we don’t support the sustainable safeguarding of those forests, then people will find other jobs and will start looking at cutting down those forests to make them into agriculture or to provide other food production. That’s why it’s so important to buy wooden products.”
What can you do?
Each of us can help protect the world’s forests! All you need to do is to choose PEFC-certified products the next time you go shopping. Especially if it means that you choose forest-based materials instead of alternatives such as plastic.
If we don’t use our forests, the land will be used for other purposes, such as cattle ranches or soy plantations. Buying forest products, such as wood and paper, gives the forest value, it creates demand, and provides a financial incentive to keep a forest a forest.
Forest certification is one of the few tools that can directly connect the consumer to the forest. It enables each of us to make a difference to the world’s forests through buying certified products.
We are reaching out to consumers to show that forest certification is about so much more than only trees – and online campaigns are an increasingly important aspect of this work. In the past year, we have been reaching out to, interacting with, and hearing from people around the world through a number of online communication campaigns.
20 years of caring for our forests
The campaign to our 20th anniversary kicked off last July. After a soft launch at the beginning of 2019, the “year of celebration” began the day after PEFC’s anniversary on 30 June. It was on this day back in 1999 when European small-forest owners came together to create PEFC – an international forest certification system that had their needs at heart.
Our 20th anniversary campaign told the story of PEFC in a series of chapters, from the early ideas until today. We have been publishing texts, photos and videos about PEFC’s history, approach, members, stakeholders and much more, to make both forest certification and what we do at PEFC more understandable and tangible.
This is the final chapter of the campaign, and as we are looking back to an exciting anniversary year, it’s time to say THANK YOU for the interest, likes, shares and the feedback from around the world!
The ‘Experience Forests, Experience PEFC’ Photo Contest
Through awe-inspiring forest photos, our ‘Experience Forests, Experience PEFC’ Photo Contest takes us to the magical world of forests.
Every year from April to June, we invite photographers and forest lovers from around the world to enter their forest photos. Running for the fourth time this year, the photo contest has brought us thousands of fantastic images of forest landscapes, wildlife and people living, working or playing in the forest.
National photo contests are run by our PEFC national members around the world, and everybody, from amateur to professional photographers, is welcome to enter their forest photos on Instagram. The best photos from the national contests enter the international contest to compete for the PEFC Photographer of the Year award.
Stay tuned as we will be highlighting the winners of those contests over the next few months, before announcing the overall winner in November.
#ForestFactFriday
Do you know how many people depend on forests for their livelihoods? How old the oldest tree is? And how many tree species there are?
Our newest social media campaign #ForestFactFriday shares interesting and unexpected facts about forests and the plants, animals and people living in them.
Every Friday, we are publishing another forest fact that will for sure surprise you and make you see forests through different eyes.
Humans of the Forests is a video campaign launched early last year. In this micro documentary series, we look beyond the facade of forests only being nice places to spend one’s leisure time, to show how vitally important they are for so many people around the world. In the videos, we hear the inspiring stories from people who are in touch with forests and timber in their daily lives, and get a sneak peek at different professions within the forest.
For the first instalment we went to Italy, where we learnt about the daily work of a forest manager, women in forestry and timber as the ideal construction material in earthquake regions. The second instalment took us to Chile, where we met Chile’s first female forest fire monitor, a forestry worker who has spent his entire professional life in the forest, and an indigenous Mapuche woman who has reached economic independence thanks to the forest.
The Humans of the Forests videos have not only been shown at film festivals, the United Nations and a number of seminars, but also made it into the international press, among others on the cover page of the Australian magazine Timber & Forestry e-news.
To hear the full stories, head to YouTube and meet the Humans of the Forests!
Be ready for more!
As our 20th anniversary campaign comes to a close, there are already some new campaigns on the horizon. Our future campaigns will see more photos, more videos and more chances to win fantastic prizes! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay up to date!
Sustainable consumption is on the rise. A Nielsen study found that 73% of global consumers say they would change their consumption habits to reduce their environment impact. This means it has never been more important to use sustainable materials, to know that your products come from sustainable sources and to prove that to your customers.
Increasing the use of sustainable, certified forest-based packaging has huge potential to not only help companies meet sustainability targets, but also to have a positive impact on the world’s forests and forest communities.
Join our PEFC Webinar: Creating impact through responsibly sourced packaging and learn more about PEFC certification and the advantages for your business and beyond! The webinar is free to attend and takes place 23 June at 11:00-11:50 CEST.
Please note that the webinar will be run in English, and you need to register in order to receive the dial-in details. For those of you that registered but can’t attend, we will be recording the webinar and will share it with you afterwards.
This webinar will allow you to better understand what certification means on the ground. See what your choice of procuring or producing PEFC-certified packaging means for the health of our forests, for biodiversity, and for the people living and working in forests. And of course, how PEFC certification works to provide this assurance, throughout the supply chain to the final product.
For brand and retailer sustainability and sourcing professionals, the webinar will assist you in understanding how sourcing certified can meet your 2020 targets against environmental and social issues.
The value chain actors - packaging manufacturers, converters and printers - will get an introduction to the value proposition of offering certified paper packaging to their customers and some tips to promote their sustainability efforts.
What else? All attendees will come away with better knowledge of the actual processes behind certification that assure the credibility of certified materials – what we do so you can trust a product delivered with PEFC certification.
You’ll also get an idea of how we continuously improve the PEFC system, ensuring it continues to meet evolving sustainability benchmarks and national and international expectations.
While everybody is welcome, the webinar will be particularly interesting for sustainability and sourcing teams of brands and retailers, both multinational and smaller national companies. It will also be valuable for sustainability and sales teams of paper packaging manufacturers, converters and printers.
Take the chance to learn first-hand about PEFC and sustainable packaging and ask your questions to sustainability experts! Register for the webinar now.
The agenda
11.00: Welcome
11.05: Discussion with Ben covering a PEFC update, and the value and evolution of forest certification in the context of forets protection and their contribution to the market
11.20: Discussion with Michael covering the new elements of the PEFC Sustainable Forest Management and PEFC Chain of Custody standards.
11.35: Q&A
11.50: Close
The speakers
Ben Gunneberg
Ben is the CEO and Secretary General of PEFC International. A forester by education and training, he has gained experience in the forest, before becoming one of the founders of what is today the world’s largest forest certification system.
Michael Berger
Michael is the Deputy Secretary General of PEFC International and Head of Technical Unit. He holds a PhD in Forestry Economics and was recently leading the revision process of the PEFC International standards.
Fabienne Sinclair
Fabienne is the Head of Marketing at PEFC International and she will lead us through the discussion as the moderator.
As we move out of the forest and down the supply chain, it’s quite amazing to see just how many sectors rely on timber and other forest-based materials. From construction and paper, to packaging, biomass, bamboo, rubber and furniture, even the fashion industry. Forest-based products are really all around us.
As sustainable consumption rises, and we increasingly look to renewable resources such as timber, it is vital that these forest-based products come from sustainable sources. PEFC certification provides a solution for this. By buying a product with PEFC certification and carrying the PEFC label, customers and consumers can be assured it came from a sustainably managed forest.
An important part of our work at PEFC is outreach to sectors relying on forest-based products, promoting the importance of them procuring and working with sustainable, certified timber. We reach out to brands and retailers, encouraging them to switch to sustainable, certified forest-based materials for their packaging. We are also working with the fashion industry to promote the use of sustainable forest-fibres to making clothing. Among many others.
PEFC and the construction industry
The construction industry is a major user of timber. Building with timber has numerous benefits: it’s renewable, requiring considerably less energy than concrete and steel to produce, and storing carbon, rather than emitting it. Timber also enables fast construction, is healthy for people living and working in the building, and allows for creative designs.
However, the timber needs to come from a sustainable source, ensuring the forest is well-managed and will be around for generations to come, and that the people living in and around the forests are protected. This is what PEFC certification delivers.
Since 2018, we have run our ‘Designing the Future with Sustainable Timber’ campaign, bringing together a range of stakeholders to promote the use of certified wood in construction in general and project certification in particular.
WAF and the Certified Timber Prize
A flagship activity of this campaign is our partnership with the World Architecture Festival (WAF). Since 2018, we have sponsored the Best Use of Certified Timber Prize, awarding architects and project teams for using certified timber as the main construction material for buildings outstanding in sustainability, innovation, quality or aesthetics.
By celebrating architects that have already chosen to use certified timber, and highlighting the amazing buildings that have been made from it, we aim to promote the use of this sustainable material to a larger audience, ensuring more architects turn to certified timber when choosing their building materials.
Submissions to WAF 2020 are running now, and architects have until 14 August to submit their projects for the Best Use of Certified Timber Prize. We can’t wait to see what stunning buildings are going to be entered this year! The shortlist will be released later this year, and the winner crowned on 5 December. If you can’t wait until there, check out the best entries from 2019 in the gallery below.
PEFC provides a space for people to come together to jointly determine how our forests should be managed.
In our latest video, our CEO Ben Gunneberg explains why it is so important to get all the stakeholders around the table and make the important decisions together.
“We all love forests in one way or the other, and we all wish to be involved with them and feel ownership of them. There is a kind of moral ownership of forests by everyone in society,” Ben explains.
“That is why it's important to get everyone involved in a multi-stakeholder process in determining how a forest is managed.”
“By having everyone involved, it allows all of us to understand better the different needs of different stakeholders and to try and find the correct balance to meet all of those needs, in a way that allows those forests to be managed sustainably and to be supported by all of us.”
