With 2,200 acres of timber land and two full-time employees, Salem, Oregon-based O'Neill Pine Co. isn't exactly a household name among Northwest forest industry firms. But the privately held, family-operated company is on the vanguard of a movement that's changing the way wood products are manufactured and marketed.
Forest certification, a movement beginning to gather strength in Europe and the United States, promises to help the forest industry rebuild consumer trust. It could even improve the uneasy relationship between timber producers and environmental activists--offering a venue for a civil (for a change) conversation about what sustainable forestry looks like.
A fine tooth comb This past fall, O'Neill Pine commissioned the Ashland-based Rogue Institute for Ecology and Economy, an independent certifying organization accredited by the international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), to take a look at the company's forestry practices.
The Rogue Institute took a fine-tooth comb to O'Neill Pine's management plan, harvesting methods, policies for leaving woody debris and protecting streamside areas, and a host of other technical, economic, and social aspects of the company's forest practices.
If the company meets each of the FSC's 10 principles, it will earn the right to "ecolabel" its products--in effect verifying that the wood comes from a well-managed forest. The label assures consumers they're not harming the environment when they buy certified lumber to rebuild a deck or add on a room.
"People should not feel guilty about using a renewable product, if the product is taken from a forest that is well managed," says Rick Fletcher, Forest Resources professor and associate director of OSU's office of the nationwide Sustainable Forestry Partnership (SFP). "When companies undergo FSC certification, they agree to abide by certain standards, and they agree to let an independent third party come in and verify that they're following those standards."
Thus in the contentious arena of forest use and management, certification offers a positive alternative to demonstrations, ballot measures, and lawsuits, says Fletcher. "Certification is one way forest landowners, the wood-products industry, and society can begin to talk about what constitutes sustainable forest management."
Certification is a growing trend especially in Europe and North America, according to Eric Hansen, Forest Products professor and SFP's marketing expert. Certified wood products are more common in western Europe than in the United States, he says, but certification, so far, is not a consumer-driven phenomenon anywhere. "Environmental organizations and a few companies are leading the way, not individual consumers."
At the same time, certification offers the wood products industry a chance to take the initiative in addressing environmental issues, says Hansen. "They're asking themselves, 'Can we develop a product that's better for the environment and offer it to the public under a "green" guarantee?'"
Certification is controversial. Some environmental groups see it as "greenwashing;" lending social sanction to forest practices better constrained by law or banned altogether. For their part, many in the forestry community see it as a caving-in to environmentalist pressure. "There is widespread skepticism about certification among small-woodland owners," says John Bliss, a member of SFP's core team; he also holds the Starker Chair in private and family forestry at OSU.
Timber landowners worry about the cost of certification, he says. They worry about losing their management autonomy to an outside third party. And, most of all, they worry there won't be a market for all this expensively produced, environmentally friendly wood.
Certification is a key topic in the Sustainable Forestry Partnership's wide-ranging research and education portfolio. One of SFP's first efforts was a business case study of the Oregon-based Collins Companies, a pioneer in the U.S. certification movement.
Between 1993 and 1998, Collins secured certification for 295,000 acres of forest land and four manufacturing plants in Pennsylvania, California, and Oregon. Collins' audit was conducted by Scientific Certification Systems of Oakland, Calif., also an approved certifier for the Forest Stewardship Council.
The company markets certified hardwood lumber and veneer, and softwood lumber, plywood, and particleboard, under the name CollinsWoodR. Some is exported to Europe, where demand for certified wood is more developed, says Lee Jimerson, manager for the CollinsWoodR product line.
The U.S. market for CollinsWoodR has been uneven. In 1995 and 1996 the company sold certified pine shelving through Home Depot, the country's largest building-supply chain. The shelving sold well, and it fetched higher prices than competing products. But the store discontinued it in late 1996 because Collins couldn't supply it in the volume Home Depot wanted.
Certified wood products do sometimes bring premium prices, says SFP's Hansen, "but right now companies are more interested in market access and market share. They want to get their products consistently into the marketplace, even if the higher prices aren't there at the outset."
It's the classic chicken-or-egg problem, he says: "Retailers need a reliable supply of certified products to provide a consistent outlet, and companies need a consistent outlet to ensure a steady supply."
About half of Collins' products are certifiable, but because retail outlets haven't been consistently available, only about 5 percent are currently marketed as certified, says Jimerson. But CollinsWoodR is now back in Home Depot's stores--its plywood was on the shelves beginning a few weeks ago, and more products will soon follow.
"We're more committed to certification than ever," Jimerson says. "In the past four months we've seen as much movement in the certified market as there's been in the past several years."
Collins' experience has helped other companies understand the ins and outs of certification, says SFP's Rick Fletcher. "The Pacific Northwest forest products industry is in transition. Certification is an added cost, and the benefits are mostly intangible at the moment."
Building green There are signs, though, that U.S. consumers are ready for certified wood. "Public awareness is growing," says O'Neill Pine's Richard Pine, who researched certification extensively for a year before his company made the commitment.
Some notable buildings are being constructed with certified lumber, he says--parts of the San Francisco International Airport and the Trail Blazers' new practice floor, to name two.
The cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco have written certified wood into their building codes. The city of Portland recently approved a "green building initiative" that would offer incentives to architects and builders for specifying certified wood products and following other environmentally sensitive practices.
On the retail side, Home Depot--under pressure from environmentalist protests--recently announced a pledge to give preference to certified wood and to phase out sales of wood products from "endangered areas," such as old-growth cedar and redwood forests, by the end of 2002. Home Depot has more than 900 stores in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Chile, and says it sells close to 10 percent of the softwood lumber in the world.
The recent formation of the Certified Forest Products Council is another sign of growing retailer interest in certified products. CFPC is a Beaverton-based organization of wood products producers, brokers, and retailers dedicated to promoting and developing the market for certified products. In effect, it's a certified-products buyer's group--the only one so far in North America--using its collective power to capture an early lead in a growing market.
Do the right thing O'Neill Pine has a 50-year tradition of conservative forest management on its timber land, scattered parcels of second-growth Douglas-fir in Washington's Lewis and Thurston counties. The company owns no sawmills--"We're just slow farmers," says Richard Pine with a smile.
The company's name, incidentally, is derived not from the Pinus genus but from the names of Pine and his wife, the former Debra O'Neill. The company, under a different name, has been in Mrs. Pine's family for three generations.
"All that time, we've had a personal and corporate philosophy that we want to keep these lands in trees," says Richard Pine--even though some parcels would doubtless bring greater returns as a parking lot or an office complex. "To tend trees you didn't plant, and to plant trees you're not going to harvest--that's a wonderful connection across the generations. We wanted to do the right thing as well as the profitable thing."
The Rogue Institute's initial assessment was positive, but it did ask the company to provide more detail in its management plan. It also required that more snags be left on harvest sites to provide habitat for wildlife.
However, the company's principal silvicultural strategy--even-aged management with several successive mechanized thinnings, followed by clearcutting--passed the certification test, as did its moderate use of herbicides in new plantations.
Certification even under the stringent Forest Stewardship Council standards doesn't mean managers have to abandon clearcutting or any other intensive forest practice, says Rick Fletcher. "There's nothing in the [FSC] guidelines that bans clearcutting or herbicides," although some of the certification bodies encourage companies to phase them out. "What certification does is ensure that practices are carefully chosen and appropriate to the situation."
O'Neill Pine hopes to meet the Rogue Institute's conditions and achieve certification of its forests by this spring. The company won't be able to market any products as certified, however, unless the logs can be processed in a certified mill. The company is considering shipping logs by rail to one of the Collins Company's certified mills in southern Oregon. From there any certified products would have to be kept separate from noncertified wood throughout shipping, warehousing, and retailing, in a process called chain-of-custody tracking.
O'Neill Pine estimates that certification will add 10 to 15 percent to the company's operating costs. "We think this is very reasonable compared to the benefits we'll receive," says Richard Pine. "There's an advantage in having other people say, 'You're practicing sustainable forestry.'"
The industry alternative This past October, the Oregon-based wood products giant Willamette Industries received certification for 610,000 acres of Oregon forest lands under a different program called the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). WI's forest conditions and forestry practices were examined by a team put together by the auditing firm Pricewaterhouse-Coopers.
The SFI program was developed by the trade group American Forest and Paper Association (AFPA). AFPA membership includes about 200 companies and trade groups. It represents 58.5 million acres and about 90 percent of U.S. industrial timber lands.
SFI consists of forest-practice guidelines that are expected of all AFPA's members, plus company-determined strategies for contributing to sustainable forestry. SFI looks for compliance with AFPA guidelines in five broad areas: sustainable forestry, continuous improvement, responsible forestry practices, protection of sites with special significance, and maintaining forest health and productivity.
SFI was not developed specifically as a certification program, but members may seek verification, through optional third-party audits, that they're complying with guidelines. Willamette Industries was the first large forest-products company to successfully complete an audit.
SFI does not constrain or discourage most industry-style forest management practices such as clearcutting, single-species tree farming, or herbicide and pesticide spraying. For these and other reasons, SFI certification has not been endorsed by most environmental organizations.
Nevertheless, the company's passing grade from the auditors is "a credible statement about the good job we're doing," asserts Marvin Brown, WI's coordinator of sustainable forestry programs. Brown spent seven years as chief forester for the state of Missouri and has a long-standing involvement in sustainable forest management issues with the Society of American Foresters. He's been active in the National Association of State Foresters, and he was one of the original member of AFPA's SFI independent-expert review panel.
He disputes environmentalists' claims that the SFI standards--which he helped develop--are too soft. He contends that the AFPA guidelines for stream protection zones, reforestation success, road construction, harvesting on steep slopes, and protecting archaeological and historic sites meet society's expectations for forests that are "very well managed."
Willamette Industries doesn't intend to market its products as certified. SFI does not monitor chain-of-custody tracking of products from the woods through the mills, and for now at least, it doesn't offer an eco-label. For WI, the payoff comes in countering environmentalist critiques and boosting consumer confidence. "When you go through a certification process," says Brown, "you identify the values by which you want to be measured. You can argue about which values are best, but we are laying on the table those we intend to follow, and we are allowing ourselves to be judged by an outside party on how well we're following them. Certification lends openness and objectivity to the discussion."
Reshaping the market The presence of certified wood products on store shelves may reshape the marketplace in surprising ways. "There will be new business alliances and structures," predicts SFP's Eric Hansen. The purchasing power of retailers like Home Depot and buyers' groups like the Certified Forest Products Council is already muscling more room for certified products on store shelves.
And, of course, producers hope--for this is the key to certification's success--that consumer demand will grow with the growing availability of "green" wood products.
Certification is a way for retailers to create a reputation for themselves as environmentally responsible. Certification also may make it easier for small operators like O'Neill Pine to compete with the giants by finding more-specialized markets in which they excel.
And finally, certification offers a way for green-minded consumers to back their convictions with cash.
"You may be a timber producer who's doing everything right for the land, and your neighbor may be doing everything wrong, and yet you both get the same price for your two-by-fours," says Rick Fletcher. "With certification, consumers can vote for sustainable forestry with their checkbooks."