The FSC system maintains three label types based on the content of particular product lines. Knowing these differences is important as they offer somewhat different market segments. Some standards and buyers are starting to differentiate FSC label requirements, providing incentives for certain labels over others.

FSC Pure - This label is the easiest to understand. All content in Pure products must come from an FSC certified forest. No recycled or non-FSC fiber of any kind. Keep in mind that non-wood fiber (ie wheatboard) or non-fiber materials (ie steel or glass) don't factor into a product's FSC status. All the system is concerned with is wood and wood fiber.

FSC Recycled - This label is also relatively straight forward. An FSC Recycled product means that a minimum of 85% of the wood fiber content is from post-consumer sources, with a maximum of 15% coming from post-industrial sources.

A lot of people wonder why FSC chooses to recognize recycled content when the ostensible goal of the system is to ensure forest stewardship. A few key reasons make a compelling case:

• The vast majority of 'recycled' products have absolutely no verification associated with them. Several reputable environmental certification claims exist, but the Mobius strip associated with recycled claims is in the public domain and subject to no practical oversight. Caveat emptor. FSC provides the highest rigor in verification.
  
• Many products that claim 'recycled' content don't differentiate post-consumer content from post-industrial. The implication is that post-industrial fiber would somehow be landfilled or wasted were it not put into products, but the truth is that we have full utilization. It would be business suicide for a producer not to find the best and highest use for their co-product or by-product as it's often the difference between profiting and not. FSC allows a small percentage of post-industrial fiber because certain products can't be made durable enough without it.
  
• Improved recycling of post-consumer fiber helps take pressure off of natural forests and keep good product out of landfills. Right now we only recover slightly more than 50% of our fiber in the US. That figure has risen dramatically through the last couple of decades, but stagnated over the last few years. More incentives are needed to move off of our current recovery plateau.
  

FSC Mixed - This is where it gets really complicated, and we're not going to cover it all, but put simply Mixed source products are a blend of FSC Pure, Recycled and/or Controlled fiber.

Controlled fiber refers to any wood fiber in an FSC product that isn't from an FSC forest or recycled. All Controlled sources are screened to ensure they aren't contributing to any of the five most destructive practices in forestry:

• Illegal logging
• Natural forest conversion to other land uses
• The liquidation of high conservation value forests
• Civil rights violations
• Genetic modification of forest species (traditional breeding being fine, of course)
  

Minimum content requirements are dictated by which claim system a certified company is operating under - transfer, percentage or volume credit - a topic we'll cover next quarter.

Please click here for a document showing each label type.