Summary
¦ B&Q belongs to the WWF Global Forest Trade Network.
¦ 100% of its forest product goods are now certified, progressing to certification or recycled.
¦ Its tropical timber buying policy is currently FSC only.
¦ All its FSC-certified tropical plywood now comes from Acre in Brazil.
¦ It is also tackling the carbon footprint of its tropical supplies.

Acacia garden furniture, mixed species Brazilian hardwood plywood, meranti doors, solid sucupira, jatoba and cumaru flooring. B&Q certainly does not fight shy of tropical timber. It stocks a wide range of products in a broad selection of species. At the same time, given its demanding environmental policy, it acknowledges that it’s a challenging business to be in and getting more so.

B&Q is a long-term member of the WWF’s Global Forest Trade Network (GFTN), which commits it to specific standards on sustainable sourcing. It works with foresters, sawmills and manufacturers in the field and, in its view, there’s currently only one goal to aim for in tropical timber supply; FSC certification with full stump-to-store chain of custody.

The high profile marketing B&Q gives its “Forest Friendly” sourcing policy also leaves little scope for error on its or its suppliers’ behalf.

“Transparency is central to everything we do,” said sustainability manager, products Julia Griffin. “We actively promote FSC labelling on product and in store and also publicise our involvement in forest management and certification programmes on the ground. Currently, for example, we’re working alongside The Forest Trust (TFT) with Indonesian garden furniture manufacturers to help them towards certification and we’re now highlighting this in marketing materials to customers.”

Of course, it’s about the product and business, but B&Q says its commitment to using tropical material is also shaped by a genuine sense of corporate social responsibility; the view that environmentally-sound exploitation of timber is part of the solution to tropical deforestation.

“If companies like us pull out, there’s the risk that forestland will be turned over to agriculture, cattle or oil palm plantations,” said Ms Griffin.

And in B&Q’s view it’s not enough for big players like it to be hands-off buyers. They have a responsibility to use their buying muscle to persuade suppliers into sustainable sourcing and certification.

“At the end of the day, there’s still not enough certified timber,” said Ms Griffin. “Suppliers have to be educated and encouraged down this route and it’s a process we, as major customers, need to be involved in.”

The thrust of B&Q’s policy is illustrated in its tropical plywood sourcing. After liaising closely with WWF and the GFTN, in September 2009 it became the first retailer to gain FSC certification for its entire supply of tropical plywood, sourcing it all from forests in the Brazilian state of Acre. Here WWF had been working with local communities to certify their forests via the Cooperfloresta co-operative. The result was the locals quadrupling their forest income by supplying exclusively FSC timber to plywood producer Laminados Triunfo. The latter subsequently became B&Q’s plywood supplier and last year, in turn, doubled both output and workforce at its Acre mill.

Ms Griffin travelled out to see the timber supply and manufacturing operation for herself. “Visiting Acre helped us understand the difference you can make when the supply chain shares a vision – it secures the forests and the livelihoods of the community by generating income through responsible management,” she said. “It strengthened our resolve to replicate the model elsewhere.”

Another growing environmental question mark over tropical timber for western buyers, is the distance it travels to market. But, while B&Q is as committed to shrinking its carbon footprint as any consumer-facing corporate, its solution is not just to substitute tropical with products sourced closer to home.

“One side of the environmental equation is the carbon impact of shipping tropical timber half way round the world,” she said. “But we also have to remember that buying these products supports communities and gives them the incentive to cultivate their forests long-term. It’s a balance and part of the solution has to be further improvement in freight and transport efficiency. We’ve worked with suppliers to minimise the footprint involved with shipping. For example, Triunfo have changed how their timber travels within the country, switching from lorries to barges to save emissions and road miles.”

The fast-growing carbon trading market creates a further test for the tropical business which buyers like B&Q have to address. “When you have investment companies from around the world buying up forestry as part of a carbon trade, it adds a new dynamic to the market and of course there are potential impacts on harvest and supply,” said Ms Griffin.

In the future the company may have a broader pool of tropical timber to draw on as its current FSC-only sourcing policy isn’t cast in stone.

“The PEFC and other schemes, like the Malaysian Timber Council’s, still have a way to go to meet our tropical sourcing criteria, particularly the social aspects,” said Ms Griffin. “But we believe it’s important to engage with them to help them move toward what we require. We do already accept PEFC products from non-tropical sources and we’re on both the PEFC UK board and FSC UK steering group.”

This potential longer-term relief on supply pressure, however, looks like being balanced by further challenges in the tropical sector, notably growing consumer environmental sensitivity. A recent survey by B&Q showed that people are gaining ever-greater awareness of sustainable forestry. Around 48% of respondents said they knew what ‘responsibly sourced’ meant, a further 38% had heard of the phrase and over 90% said they’d prefer wood labelled as “responsibly sourced”, albeit provided it was no more expensive. The responses added impetus to B&Q’s plans to make its procurement policy more rigorous still – and even harder work.

In February the company achieved its goal of 100% of the wooden product lines it buys, both tropical and temperate, being either FSC or PEFC chain of custody certified, in progress to certification with TFT or WWF GFTN, or recycled. That’s been demanding enough. Now there’s the ongoing task, as forest product sales continue to grow, of securing and supporting those supplies into the future.