At SunDance, it’s not enough to just say that we care about sustainability. Sundance has chosen to obtain certifications from the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC® C155908) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI®) and they are integral to our environmental initiatives. Without healthy forests, our environment, society, and the economy would be at serious risk. Learn about these organizations, certifications, and how they’re helping printing companies like SunDance be more sustainable.
The Forest Stewardship Council®
The FSC® is an independent non-profit that promotes “environmentally sound, socially beneficial and economically prosperous management of the world's forests.” The FSC offers the Forest Management Certification and the Chain-of-Custody Certification to improve forest management and supply chain practices, respectively. On-site audits are performed by third-party certifiers to ensure the integrity of the FSC’s standards.
We recently renewed our Chain-of-Custody (CoC) certification which means SunDance is an official FSC-certified printer for paper-based print products (e.g. marketing materials, packaging, labels). To obtain the CoC certification, an Independent FSC-accredited certifier must verify that the company’s chain-of-custody operations meet the FSC’s principles and criteria.
Overview of the CoC certification process:
- Contact an FSC-accredited certifier.
- Submit an application to the FSC-accredited certifier.
- Complete an on-site assessment of compliance with the FSC CoC standard.
- Receive certification approval and begin production and sale of FSC-certified products.
- Undergo annual on-site audits to maintain CoC certification.
Only companies that have FSC certification are allowed to use the FSC’s trademarks and labels to promote their products. FSC certification labels help consumers identify products that come from responsibly managed sources. To learn more about the FSC see https://us.fsc.org/en-us.
The Sustainable Forestry Initiative®
SFI® is an independent non-profit organization that promotes sustainable forest management. Its mission encompasses a variety of responsibilities such as maintaining forest productivity and health; protecting water quality, biological diversity, and special sites; providing training and education; supporting research, and broadening sustainable forestry through outreach and community involvement. SFI sets three standards which are third-party on-site audited by accredited certification bodies:
- SFI 2015-2019 Forest Management Standard
- SFI 2015-2019 Fiber Sourcing Standard
- SFI 2015-2019 Chain-of-Custody Standard
- SunDance has received certification for the SFI 2015-2019 Chain-of-Custody (CoC) Standard which is a system that tracks forest fiber content through production and manufacturing to the end product. Companies use the SFI chain-of-custody certification to track and communicate how much of their product comes from certified lands, fiber sourcing, recycled content, or non-certified forest content. To learn more about SFI see https://www.forests.org/
SFI Certification Label
The SFI program has on-product labels to help consumers identify products that support responsible forestry. See more information at https://www.forests.org/labels-claims-and-global-label/. The SFI Certified Chain-of-Custody labels, in particular, communicate the use of fiber from certified forests or certified sourcing or recycled content. The labels also indicate that the product doesn’t contain controversial sources and the content is calculated using one of these three approaches: physical separation, average percentage, and the volume credit method. Only companies that have SFI certification are allowed to use the SFI trademarks and labels to promote their products.
Sustainability Initiatives
In addition to our Chain-of-Custody certifications from FSC and SFI, SunDance has also implemented a variety of efficiency and sustainability initiatives. We’re the first Sustainable Green Partnership (SGP) certified offset printer in Florida and received a Certificate of Sustainability from Applied Materials Trading in 2018 for our recycling efforts. Whatever the future holds, sustainability will continue to be a core value for our printing company.
Contact us today or request a quote to get started with sustainably-sourced print products!
