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Commitment 16: Zero deforestation in our supply chain
What’s the issue?
Forests are critical ecosystems for our planet, making up approximately 30 per cent of the world’s land area. They provide a range of vital ecosystem services including capturing and storing climate-warming greenhouse gases, purifying water, and providing valuable habitats for wildlife.
But there is a problem, we’re losing forests at an alarming rate, with over 8.4 million soccer fields worth of Amazon Forest being cleared between 2009-2019 alone as a result of agricultural land clearing and illegal logging.
What are we doing?
We’ve long been committed to the sustainable sourcing of paper and wood-based products, and take a zero-tolerance approach for illegally logged timber entering our supply chain. Our approach is underpinned by our Sustainable Wood-Fibre Sourcing policy, credible third-party certification and supply chain transparency requirements to inform sourcing decisions.
To support the industry to transition to more sustainable forestry practices, in 2016 we established a long-term target that all paper products sold at Officeworks needed to be either FSC certified or made from 100% recycled content. As of June 30 2021, over 8,200 products representing 99% of office supplies & educational products sold meet this criteria. This includes 132 products supplied by an international brand, which while they are not FSC certified underwent an independent review that satisfied us they meet similar forestry standards. We recognise that this significant achievement has only been possible due to the ongoing commitment and support of our suppliers and partners over the last five years. For the remaining 400 products that do not yet meet this criterion, we have detailed action plans in place which involves either transitioning or replacing these items at a later stage.
With the completion of our initial sustainable wood-fibre sourcing goal, our focus now moves towards our broader commitment to ensure that paper and timber products, products containing palm oil and paper-based product packaging doesn’t contain deforested materials.
We’re not just committed to sourcing more sustainable timber-based products; we want to play an active part in protecting the world’s forests for the future. That’s why we established our Restoring Australia initiative, to restore landscapes across the country by planting two trees for every one used, based on the weight of paper products purchased by our customers.
Focus for FY2022
Our focus for FY22 will be to transition more of our timber furniture to FSC certified materials. We will continue to work towards zero deforestation in our supply chain, and will broaden our scope by working with suppliers to improve transparency of our packaging materials, to ensure they are sourced from legal and responsible sources.
