Chain of custody is one of the new terms that
have entered the discussion around certified
forestry. It refers to the process of tracking
forest products from their place of origin (the
forest) through all stages of transfer and production
to the final consumer of an end product. All
the changes in custodianship across the process,
whether harvesting, processing, transporting
and distributing, compose the elements of the
chain.
The objective of the chain of custody is to
create an information link between the raw material
included in a forest based product and the origin
of that raw material.
Tracking the flow of material is a challenge
given the way wood and chips flow throughout
the industry, with all major forest companies
relying on external suppliers for at least some
part of their wood supply. However there is an
increasing interest from customers to know the
origin of the products they purchase, for instance
to seek assurance that no illegally harvested
material ends up in their pulps. Products covered
by an audited Chain of Custody provide these
assurances.
Several Chain of Custody systems are currently
in use within the forest products industry. At
Canfor we use one that follows the standard defined
by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest
Certification schemes. This standard allows materials
with different certification pedigrees to be
combined and accounted for under the system.
Click here to
link to the PEFC site for more information.
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At Canfor we know the source of all logs
and chips used in our sawmills and pulp mills;
those from our own managed forest tenures
as well as those purchased from outside suppliers.
Almost all of the wood we use originates
from
publicly owned forest land managed under
licence from provincial governments.
In addition
to
already strict environmental regulations,
more and more of the “outside” purchases
are from forests that have been third-party
certified to sustainable forest management
standards. |
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