Thursday, 24 September 2020
FSC Featured in Amazon Climate Pledge Friendly Program
Through this initiative, Amazon is helping to transform the global market for FSC-certified products and helping to protect the world’s forests for generations to come.
As a market-based system for forest preservation, FSC has always relied on demand signals to encourage uptake of its certification by industry and forest owners. When it comes to forests, our collective well-being depends ever-increasingly on the buying decisions people make.
Put simply, to choose FSC, consumers have to:
1. Remember FSC when they need a forest-based product;
2. Be able to find and buy an FSC-certified product that satisfies that need; and
3. Feel good about their purchase, so the virtuous cycle can be repeated.
FSC has long sought to make it easier for consumers to reliably find and buy FSC-certified products - especially in e-commerce. Making consumers aware of FSC as a better option while shopping has also been very difficult to do, especially at scale.
This is where Amazon’s brand-new “Climate Pledge Friendly” program has the potential to be a game-changer. It creates a customer experience that moves shoppers seamlessly from discovery and understanding of FSC to direct purchase of FSC-certified products. It also makes it easier for shoppers to reliably find FSC products on-demand.
FSC is the only forest-based product certification recognized in this bold new program, which at launch will include 25,000 products carrying one or more of 19 sustainability certifications. Each certifying organization that is part of Climate Pledge Friendly was vetted by sustainability and science experts within Amazon and third-party consultants to ensure they are reputable, transparent, and scientifically defensible, including third-party certifiers. This is a testament to the unsurpassed integrity of FSC.
To support this program in its launch phase, the FSC US and Global Development teams had to navigate a significant challenge: while FSC maintains a database of certified forest owners and forest product manufacturers at info.fsc.org, it does not possess data on available FSC-certified products. To overcome this, the US and Global teams worked with Amazon to directly engage a limited number of FSC-certified product manufacturers for initial inclusion in the program. The intention is to add more products from certified manufacturers over time. Certified US-based manufacturers of products sold on Amazon.com who would like to be included in the program may contact the FSC US office at info at us.fsc point org.
Climate Pledge Friendly launches first in the US on September 23; Amazon is also exploring launching in other countries in the near future.
For detailed information on program qualification criteria and to shop for Climate Pledge Friendly products, please visit: http://www.amazon.com/ClimatePledgeFriendly or look for the Climate Pledge Friendly badge on qualifying products.