1. Can you present your function and the activities of PEFC in a few words?

Since November 2017, I am the Director of PEFC France, a member of the international organization PEFC which includes 55 countries around the world. Our « raison d’être »: to promote sustainable forest management through an ambitious certification program whose vocation is both to preserve forests and to perpetuate the forest resource to meet wood needs today and for the future.      Today, more than 78,300 forest owners and nearly 3,300 companies in France are committed to PEFC certification.

Given the evolution of economic, environmental and societal issues and knowledge, we are currently working on the revision of our sustainable forest management standard for France. For nearly two years, a hundred stakeholders have been exchanging and contributing to the evolution of the standard to reach a consensus on the new PEFC sustainable management requirements for metropolitan France and Guyana.

At the same time, we are working to develop the demand for certified products among all public and private prescribers in various sectors of activity, including packaging, furniture and construction made of certified wood. For example, in the packaging sector, we have deployed, with the help of our international bodies, a campaign to promote PEFC-certified packaging in order to highlight the benefits of PEFC certification in this sector, and to unite the entire sector around the development of the use of certified wood-paper-cardboard products in the production of packaging.

2. PEFC joined the CNE in 2019 as a member of its 9th college (other companies and associations): could you explain what mobilizes PEFC to support the CNE and its actions?

A large number of PEFC-certified companies are involved in the packaging sector and produce a wide range of products such as cooperages, crates, primary packaging, secondary packaging, etc. The collaboration with the CNE allows us to increase awareness among these actors of the major role they play in the preservation of the forest and to better understand the stakes and expectations of CNE member brands.

3. Why is the certification of sustainable forest management of packaging (PEFC) not a prerequisite in the ecodesign criteria of packaged products?

We can only push in this direction. PEFC provides the guarantee that PEFC certified packaging comes from sustainably managed forests and controlled sources, which means that the wood resource used to produce a package is traced and followed from the PEFC certified forest to the finished product. The upcoming national and European legislative changes will probably make things evolve from this point of view.

4. Given the societal pressure, does the PEFC label integrate the local (territorial animation) and social (employment) dimensions of the “fiber” resource?

PEFC gathers around a multifunctional and balanced vision of the forest and promotes the fragile but essential balance between its environmental, societal and economic dimensions. As such, PEFC certification also ensures that the forest is a place of work and welcome the general public in its leisure time.

The forest is increasingly at the heart of discussions because it is one of the main solutions to climate change but it is also threatened. One of the objectives of the periodic revision of our standard of sustainable forest management is precisely to try to always respond as well as possible to the evolutions of these multiple stakes.

5. How to communicate when a product-packaging pair is certified only on the product or only on the packaging?

In the international standard for trademarks (ST 2001: 2020), it is stated that the use of PEFC trademarks must be accurate, verifiable, relevant and not misleading. PEFC International has developed several alternative messages on the logo generation platform that allow PEFC certified companies to declare very precisely what is certified; the product, the packaging, the print etc…. It is even possible to name the certified product e.g. “PEFC certified magazine”. While the expectations of citizens tend towards a more sustainable consumption, it is essential that the message associated with the PEFC brand is well readable and understood by the consumer. The communication on the PEFC brand is an extremely important point of vigilance for PEFC France.

6. How are the criteria of circularity of the resource (circular economy) integrated by the PEFC label?

The PEFC chain of custody considers recycled material as PEFC certified material in the same way as material from sustainably managed forests. Two statements are possible in the new standard:

If the product contains 100% recycled material, the PEFC recycled logo must be used:

If at least 70% of the material is certified and less than 99.9% is recycled material, then the certified company can use the PEFC certified logo with the statement “this product is from sustainably managed forests, from recycled and controlled sources”