How the Right Software Facilitates Forest Product Sustainability Certification

Right now, organizations that procure wood and sell wood-derived products have an opportunity to significantly increase their revenue by supplying the growing market for certified sustainable forest products.

Market analysis shows that consumers and builders are focused on buying and using wood-derived products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). For example, 77% of shoppers who are aware of FSC will choose an FSC product over its non-certified equivalent, and 76% of consumers favor SFI-labeled paper products over those without such a label.

Likewise, many builders prefer green building practices, which include using certified sustainable wood. According to a 2021 survey of 1,200 building industry professionals, by 2024, 42% of survey respondents plan to build more than 60% of their projects using green building best practices.

To take advantage of this market demand for certified sustainable wood products, forest product companies need a chain-of-custody certification from FSC and/or SFI. Your organization can obtain these certification by demonstrating 1) that your procured wood originates from forests that are certified as sustainably managed and 2) that the wood came to your company either directly or through other suppliers with a chain-of-custody certification.

How can you most effectively prove the certified sustainable origin and chain-of-custody of your wood products? Below we explain how the right cloud-based software gives you the proof you need for certification.

Geotagging: The Key to Establishing Chain of Custody

With Legna’s cloud-based Angel software, instead of your loggers creating paper tickets, they create an e-ticket in the field that is geotagged with the exact location where it was created. You can use this digital ticket to demonstrate the exact provenance of a particular load.

Moreover, as the trucker moves out with the e-ticketed load, the Angel software tracks where the load is going by tracking the e-ticket. As a result, your procurement staff have real-time, ongoing visibility into the location of your loads, and you can prove that your company maintained custody of the wood at all times.

For wood or wood products that you acquire from other organizations, if they too have Angel software in place, you can prove the origin of that wood as well as its chain of custody.

How Angel Geotags Your Loads

Wondering exactly how the Angel software can accurately geotag your lumber?

The Angel application on your loader’s cellular device geotags a load by using the GPS location of the loader’s device as a proxy for the load’s origin.

But what if your loader tries to create the load ticket when not next to the loader? We prevent this possibility through one of two ways:

• We help you physically mount the cellular device within the loader, or
• We help you set the cellular device so that it won’t work if it’s a certain distance away from the loader.
  

In either case, the geotagging data for each load will be reliable and acceptable to an independent auditor reviewing your data for the purpose of chain-of-custody certification.

Learn More

Creating electronic, geotagged tickets for your loads gives your organization additional advantages beyond enabling you to demonstrate chain of custody. For example, it can help your organization improve the ROI of its operations.

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits your organization can obtain with  chain-of-custody sustainability certifications from FSC or SFI, take a look at our e-book Supplying the Growing Market for Sustainable Forest Products: The Sustainability Certifications That Can Expand Your Market Opportunities.