Awareness and understanding of the value FSC needs to be increased so that more people understand how they can contribute to forest sustainability. Positive action can be as simple as encouraging consumers to choose more sustainable products. The FSC Forest Week campaign brought together our global FSC community to educate and encourage everyone to be forest stewards by communicating the value and benefits of FSC certification.
FSC Forest Week saw our Australian and New Zealand certificate holders and promotional licence holders showcase their support and dedication to responsible forest management in various creative and stand-out ways.
One example of this is our long-standing certificate holder Hally Labels, who celebrated FSC Forest Week by hosting workplace events in Auckland and Christchurch. Murry Davis, General Manager of Hally Labels stated,
We are proud to have achieved nine years of FSC chain of custody certification in 2022, supplying billions of labels each year on certified paper materials. Our FSC certification provides our customers with the confidence their labels are part of a genuine supply chain dedicated to the responsible management of the world’s forest resources. We celebrated FSC Forest Week with events at our Auckland and Christchurch plants, naturally enjoying some green-themed treats. These events gave us a valuable opportunity to recognise the importance of our FSC journey and thank all our staff for their involvement in reaching this milestone.
The FSC Forest Week campaign gained immense traction on social media globally, and FSC ANZ’s promotional licence holders and certificate holders had an incredible contribution to this success. You can view the social media wall highlighting some of these posts here.
Our team celebrated FSC Forest Week alongside our stakeholders at our two major events, the FSC Forest Walk hosted by HVP Plantations and the Forests for the Future: The Value of FSC forum in New South Wales.
The FSC Forest Walk:
The FSC Forest Walk, hosted by long-standing forest management certificate holder HVP Plantations explored several of their sites around Creswick, where the HVP Plantations team demonstrated and explained the life cycle of their forests and how they uphold FSC’s rigorous, responsible forest management standards.
HVP Plantations provided an experience that showcased their dedication, innovation and commitment to sustainable outcomes and best practice forest management. The FSC Forest Walk was also an excellent opportunity for licence holders and chain of custody certificate holders to gain a greater understanding of the value of FSC in their own supply chains.
Forests for the Future: The Value of FSC
The Forests for the Future: The Value of FSC forum was an opportunity for our NSW-based stakeholders to come together and celebrate the importance of FSC and responsible forest management. In addition, the event gave our attendees a chance to network and share experiences and ideas with people from organisations in different parts of the supply chain.
Our speakers included Board Directors Jon Dee, James Felton-Taylor, and FSC ANZ's, Patricia Fitzsimons. Throughout the day, we explored the various positive social outcomes of FSC’s standards and discussed how to optimise promotional opportunities with FSC. The forum also provided an opportunity to hear directly from an FSC-certified forest manager about the measures taken to protect vital habitats and preserve biodiversity in FSC-certified native forests.
Collectively the voices of our certificate holders and promotional licence holders amplified our message and enabled us to spread the word about the importance of FSC-responsible forest management throughout Australia and New Zealand. We are deeply grateful for our FSC community and look forward to celebrating FSC Forest Week again with you all in 2023!