Technical Updates


Monday, 10 August 2009
Public Comments Sought on FSC CoC Group Eligibility Requirements

FSC-US is currently revising its Group Chain-of-Custody (CoC) Policy, which is slated to be open for public comment by early September. As decided at last year’s FSC General Assembly in Cape Town, group CoC eligibility can now be determined at the national initiative level since the term “small organization” varies from country to country.


The current policy allows organizations to join or form a CoC group certificate if the organization has 15 or fewer employees, or 25 or fewer employees with a gross annual sales cap of $1 million for all wood products. FSC-US has engaged the current group CoC certificate holders in a dialogue to develop an appropriate U.S. policy. We are hopeful that the new FSC CoC group eligibility requirements will give a wider range of small organizations the opportunity to become FSC CoC certified, which will expose a large number of manufacturers, retailers and end users to the FSC brand.

The Group CoC Policy was created to allow small companies be part of the FSC CoC certification chain without incurring the costs of obtaining their own FSC CoC certificate. Small companies find many benefits in being part of a group besides the costs savings, such as access to templates and tools to help them become FSC-certified, guidance from the Group CoC Coordinator and introduction to new markets.

We will post the proposed changes to the policy to the FSC-US website by early September.