Stora Enso launches Beyond Board services to support customers on packaging sustainability 

This August and September, UPM will be organizing forest trips for 6th grade primary school students in five different Finnish cities, where UPM’s mills are located. The trips will take place if the COVID-19 situation allows it. This is the fourth time that UPM has organized such excursions. The aim is to provide pupils with a positive forest experience and increase knowledge of how Finnish forests are used. During the excursions, which are called “Commercial forest — Development and Sustainable Use,” pupils will learn about the commercial and recreational use of forests, wildlife management and wood-based products. In addition, every pupil gets a chance to plant a seedling that will become a part of a forest. With 40 classes taking part, there will be roughly 800 pupils and teachers in total taking part during these excursions. Due to the COVID-19 situation, the number of classes is smaller than before. Despite the exceptional circumstances, the forest excursions will provide a safe experience for pupils: sp ecial arrangements have been made for the excursions, e.g. taking into account safety distances and hygiene.

A key part of FSC’s offer is the development of requirements for the FSC Regulatory Module: a voluntary module that complements existing FSC certification requirements to support EUDR compliance. It presents additional forest management, chain of custody and controlled wood requirements for organizations looking to use their FSC certification to support their efforts to demonstrate compliance with EUDR. The FSC Regulatory Module sets the framework and requirements to: *introduce a due diligence system to support EUDR compliance, including information collection, risk assessment and risk mitigation, *gather and transmit precise information on the origin of products (geolocation and time of production), and *adds further assurance that only deforestation-free material enters an FSC chain of custody value chain that needs to be EUDR compliant.

Are you an FSC certificate holder and need to comply with the upcoming EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR)? You might qualify to become an early adopter of FSC EUDR Aligned. Since the EUDR came into force in June 2023, FSC has been dedicated to strengthening its system and developing new technologies to support our certificate holders to meet these requirements. FSC EUDR Aligned will provide a set of integrated tools to tens of thousands of companies – at different points along the value chain and with vastly different needs – to help meet EUDR legality, sustainability, and due diligence obligations. We are ready to onboard a select number of companies to start testing our solutions.