Record Growth for SFI Program

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) program recorded substantial growth in 2007, including a 750 percent increase in locations with SFI chain-of-custody certification of their ability to track products from certified forests.

“We started 2007 with 21 certificates at 48 locations, and ended it with 102 SFI chain-of-custody certifications at 408 certified locations,” says SFI President and CEO Kathy Abusow. Chain-of-custody certification means a company has a tracking system in place that identifies the amount of certified, uncertified and recycled content in the forest products it buys, uses or sells.

There was also an impressive increase in the amount of SFI-certified lands—from 135 million acres at the end of 2006 to 143.7 million acres by the end of 2007.

“Consumers are enthusiastically embracing SFI certification because they want to know they are buying forest products with a solid environmental pedigree,” says Larry Selzer, president and CEO of The Conservation Fund.