What is Chain of Custody Certification for Wood Flooring?
Recently I was looking at Carlisle wide-plank flooring and noted that they offered chain of custody certification for their products. What is chain of custody?
It’s a voluntary certification offered by The Forest Stewardship Council that basically certifies that every stage in the wood flooring’s life has been documented. In other words, no monkeyshines are going on. This can be a costly enterprise for wood flooring manufacturers, since they need to bear the costs of on-site visits for certification.
According to the FSC, monkeyshines they want to avoid are wood that has been:
- Illegally harvested
- Harvested in violation of traditional and civil rights
- Harvested in forests that have been identified to be of particular biological and/or cultural value
- Harvested from conversion of natural forest (or other natural habitat)
- Harvested from genetically modified trees