Voluntary commitment on wood traceability
The wood used by ACE paperboard producers is traced back to its origins. The beverage carton manufacturers require paperboard producers to have verifiable systems in place to trace the wood fibres back to the forest they came from.
Traceability is one of industry’s most important strategic means to combat illegal logging and to avoid using unacceptable sources of wood. Traceability is independently verified according to ‘chain-of-custody’ standards set by FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) and/or the PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes).
Fact: 100% of the paperboard produced in Europe for beverage cartons comes from independently chain-of-custody-certified paper mills.
What is chain-of-custody ?
Chain-of-custody is a traceability system to ensure that wood comes from controlled and acceptable sources and ensures traceability throughout the value chain. It is defined by FSC as ‘the path taken by raw materials, processed materials or finished products from the forest to the consumer including each stage of transformation, manufacturing, storage and transport where progress to the next stage involves a change of ownership of the materials or products’.
Industry’s worldwide commitment on wood traceability
The beverage carton industry’s requirements for paperboard are estimated at 2 million tonnes annually. With beverage cartons made of some 75% from wood fibre, a natural renewable resource, there is a need to secure long-term supplies. ACE members have a vested interest in responsible management of the forests where the raw materials for their products are sourced.
This is why the beverage carton manufacturers and their paperboard suppliers have put in place rigorous traceability systems, so that they can trace the wood back to the forest it came from and ensure supply from legal and acceptable sources . These systems are independently verified and certified according to the ‘Chain-of-Custody’ standards set by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and /or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).
And in 2007, ACE members Tetra Pak, SIG Combibloc and Elopak initiated a global voluntary sector commitment on wood traceability.
The commitment outlines a system to ensure 100% chain-of-custody certification
- By 2015 for all paperboard purchased worldwide
- By 2018 for all their own packaging material manufacturing plants worldwide.
The companies imposed strict criteria for acceptable wood fibres :
- Either from forests managed and certified according to FSC or PEFC criteria for forest management
- Or from ‘controlled wood’ sources that have defined quality criteria (no wood from forest conversion, no wood from sensitive areas or high conservation value-forests, no GM trees).
The systematic use of standards established by universally recognised and accepted schemes such as FSC or PEFC, certification or independent verification by accredited auditors, and the third-party review under ACE (see below) provides good assurance of achieving the purpose of the commitment.
Monitoring of compliance with the commitment is carried out by ProForest, an external verifier contracted by ACE. The annual progress report by ProForest is published on ACE’s website.
The initiative contributes to protecting and improving the quality of the environment, and specifically to the fight against illegal logging. It has received endorsement and recognition from the European Commission, Members of the European Parliament, and environmental NGOs. The industry is also keen to set examples of good environmental stewardship and entice all players in the sector to follow the lead given by ACE member companies and protect some of the world’s most vulnerable regions.
Industry commitment to traceability : current status and progress report
Within Europe, 100% of the wood used in the paperboard used by Tetra Pak, SIG Combibloc and Elopak to make the cartons comes from paper mills that have an FSC certified chain-of-custody in place. This means that all wood in Europe is fully traceable when it leaves the paper mills. When all converting plants (beverage carton manufacturing plants) will be fully certified in Europe, this traceability will be fully proven down to the carton itself.
The worldwide industry commitment is subject to an annual review by ProForest, an independent verifier of forest supply chain practices.
The first report on the commitment sets the baseline performance level attained by the three companies at the end of 2007. It found that 47% of the wood fibres used as raw materials by the companies had been certified according to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standard for forest management or the one for ‘controlled wood’ (see above). In addition, three out of the 54 manufacturing plants were certified to comply with the FSC chain-of-custody standard at that time.
The latest report for 2009 saw the first figure reach 52%. The number of chain-of-custody-certified plants increased from 3 to 16.