Forestry Guideline implementation

Our ultimate goal is that the wood fibre used in our packaging comes from sustainably managed forests certified to the highest standards. 

The goals and guiding principles for the forest management and traceability work are described in the Tetra Pak Forestry Guideline. We expect our suppliers to show continuous improvement with respect to forest management and traceability.

We are committed to implementing the policy through a stepwise programme, which monitors all suppliers annually, and increasingly rewards them for supplying products made from wood fibre that furthers progress towards our ultimate goal. We evaluate all suppliers to ensure they make progress in moving towards increased traceability and certification of wood sources.

There are four steps to full implementation. The certification of traceability (chain of custody) runs independently and in parallel to the certification of sustainable forest management.

Traceability

ProForest, the independent auditing body, verifies the systems in place from forests to our supplier's plants, and verifies that the information on our sources of fibre is accurate. We have undertaken to exclude all unacceptable sources, as defined by GFTN and FSC, and the audits have confirmed that our sources are acceptable. 

During 2007 we started the chain of custody certification, and we have committed to having all converting plants certified by 2018 at the latest.

Forest management

Ultimately we would like all our suppliers to be certified with respect to a preferred certification scheme – currently FSC.  In the interim, we give credit to other international forest management certification schemes. Suppliers should be able to demonstrate and account for the share of certified wood fibres used to produce paper board for us under an international certification scheme. Certification offers transparency, control and reassurance with respect to the management of the forest sources we use.

Current results can be found in the Forest Programme Brochure (Documents) and in the Environmental Reports section