The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), along with others worldwide, shares the commitment to ensuring the health and resilience of forests. The European Union has identified the United States and Canada as low-risk countries for deforestation, and SFI has taken further action to reduce risk through the SFI Standards. With the European Commission’s recent release of its EUDR simplification review, we have yet to see a reduced burden for certified products from low-risk countries. We believe that SFI certification is well positioned to meet global deforestation and degradation policies, such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). We have also introduced new tools specifically to demonstrate compliance with EUDR. We encourage competent authorities to recognize forest certification like SFI and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) to help provide assurances of no deforestation and forest degradation in low-risk countries. The SFI 2022 Forest Management Standard, in place since January 2022, prevents deforestation, forest degradation, and does not support forest lands converted to other land uses including natural forests to plantations.

Yupo Corporation America has joined the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership, (SGP), as a Silver Level Patron. SGP is the leading authority in sustainable printing certifications for print manufacturers. Through its patronage, Yupo joins other print industry leaders dedicated to promoting sustainability, supporting the aims of SGP and keeping costs low for certification of print facilities. “Supporting SGP not only aligns with Yupo’s corporate sustainability functions, but demonstrates the company’s leadership and advocacy for sustainable print operations,” according to Marci Kinter, Chair SGP Technical Committee. “Although SGP does not certify Yupo products, it does recognize the role the company plays within the print value chain.”

Thailand announces their application to PEFC for membership and we highlight the opportunities of certification in Asia and beyond – Asian Paper Bangkok 2016 was a busy few days! “Accelerating demand for legal and sustainable timber represents both opportunities and challenges for the world's forest's, specifically in Asia,” said Ben Gunneberg, CEO of PEFC International, as he spoke at the Certification, Environment and Sustainability session on the first day of Asian Paper. “Certification must adapt to the constantly shifting sands of needs of people. We need to ensure that sustainable forest management equally balances the environmental, social and economic pillars of sustainability, we need to find common ground between global demand side requirements and local supply side expectations," Mr. Gunneberg explained.