Taking the sustainability message across the supply chain

Digital promotion and marketing toolkits and architectural and vocational school student outreach are just latest developments in the comprehensive programme of verified sustainable tropical timber market education and promotion Le Commerce du Bois (LCB) has undertaken with support and input from the STTC.  The French timber trade federation’s goal, Communication Manager Jessica Tholon told the STTC Conference in Paris, is to highlight the benefits of sourcing and using verified sustainable tropical material across the timber supply chain in the widest sense.

LCB distributed the digital toolkits on usb sticks through a series of regional meetings in 2017 organised for the range of industry stakeholders. Here delegates were also given information on tropical timber buyers among its membership, its due diligence accreditation system and environmental charter.

“We also highlighted our dedicated self-funded website, Le Bon Choix du Bois Tropical (Tropical timber – the good choice), which covers tropical timber applications, technical performance and lists 60 suppliers across France,” said Ms Tholon.

Specifiers have also been targeted at the meetings around France, with additional contributions from WWF and the ATIBT about the importance of sustainable forest management in tropical timber countries and the end product’s potential applications.

Audiences also heard from five leading LCB members on their sourcing and active promotion of sustainable tropical timber; Rougier, Tradelink, CID Bois, Pasquet menuiseries and Bois des 3 Ports. As part of the LCB programme, these companies also undertook to work towards specific goals through 2016/17 for increasing the percentage of their tropical timber sales accounted for by certified material. “The companies set ambitious targets, but one increased the proportion over the period from 2% to 10%, and others from 51% to 55% and 26% to 30%,” said Ms Tholon.

In another particularly high profile project developed with STTC support, LCB made seven videos featuring comment from architects, developers, timber suppliers and other stakeholders under the headline “I believe in certified tropical timber”. “These have been particularly successful and widely viewed,” said Ms Tholon.

Meanwhile, the goal of LCB’s conferences for architectural and vocational schools, she concluded, was to take the core messages on using verified sustainable tropical timber to specifiers and buyers of the future.