MARKETING: 7 Companies Leave Forest-Certification Program Over 'Greenwash' Claims

Amanda Peterka, E&E reporter

Seven large companies are pulling products out of the nation's largest certification program for forest products over concerns about alleged "greenwashing," an advocacy group opposed to the program announced today.

The group, ForestEthics, had been urging a dozen or so Fortune 500 companies to withdraw from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, alleging the program is a pawn of the timber industry and has sanctioned environmentally damaging timber projects.

"SFI is 100 percent funded and created by logging companies, and the fox cannot guard the henhouse. It's just an illegitimate system," Todd Paglia, executive director of ForestEthics, said in an interview. "It's been, we believe, constructed in order to take advantage of large companies, their good intentions to try to buy more sustainable wood and products."

Withdrawing from the initiative are Allstate Insurance Co., Office Depot Inc., Aetna Inc., Symantec Corp., Garnet Hill, Performance Bicycle and United Stationers Inc., ForestEthics said.

Three companies are switching to the Forest Stewardship Council program, which ForestEthics calls the "gold standard" for wood certification.

"It just wasn't meeting the needs of our environmental stewardship efforts," said Bill Teague, director of creative production and brand strategy for Performance Bicycle. The company chose the initiative in the first place, he said, because it was "less expensive to go that route."

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative says ForestEthics' claims are baseless. Choice between forest certification systems is a good thing if the decision "is based on accurate information," said Kathy Abusow, the initiative's president.

Abusow said she encourages companies to listen to what her group does and "what we achieve on the ground." The initiative was established in 1995 by the timber industry, but it is now "an independent, non-profit charitable organization," according to a statement on the initiative's website.

Products certified by the initiative contain a simple but familiar tree label. Seventy percent of certified forestland in the United States is certified to SFI standards or standards that the group recognizes, so supporting the organization means supporting "domestic communities, domestic forestry," Abusow said.

The initiative has certified about 58 million acres of U.S. forestland.

"The truth is SFI is doing well," Abusow said. "We continue to grow ... but more importantly we're continuing to expand forest certification and supporting responsible forest management."
No stranger to controversy

This is not the first time the initiative has come under fire by forest groups.

The Washington Forest Law Center in Seattle, for example, has filed papers with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission asking the agency to investigate the initiative "because of what we believe is their greenwashing," said Peter Goldman, director of the center.

"Greenwashing" refers to deceptive marketing or labels to mislead the public about environmental practices.

"SFI forestry is basically business-as-usual forestry with a green label on it," Goldman said. "It's a house of cards that's going to fall. People are going to realize that it's not the green product that they think they're getting."

Paglia called the withdrawal of the seven companies a "gigantic loss" for the initiative's credibility.

Allstate, United Stationers and Aetna have decided to pursue Forest Stewardship Council certification for at least some of their products. United Stationers said in a statement that "it is very safe to say that this company alone represents a shift in tens of millions of dollars going to FSC products and away from SFI."

The rest of the companies, at least for now, will be unlabeled. Goldman does not see that as a bad thing.

"No label is better than a phony label," Goldman said.

ForestEthics supports the Forest Stewardship Council, which was established to assure that wood is grown sustainably in tropical regions but was expanded to include 35 million acres of certified forestland in the United States.

While the council is the "gold standard," Paglia said, there are improvements that it could make, including tightening the standard for how the council evaluates controversial wood-sourcing areas.

"We have always refused to join the FSC as an organization or to be part of their board," Paglia said. "Our job is to take the gold standard and make it even better."

Abusow pointed out that wood comes from complex supply chains and because of that, much of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative's wood makes its way into Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood.

She said that she would welcome the opportunity to work together with ForestEthics, the Forest Stewardship Council and other certification systems to tackle global issues related to forestry, such as illegal logging and harm to wildlife.

 "I certainly go to bed at night knowing that forests are better served because we exist, and they're better served because FSC exists as well," Abusow said, "and we should be really understanding that there's room for choice and more than one program."