SFI AND ESG

SFI’s four pillars help address environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics.

Investors are increasingly evaluating businesses on their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. SFI is well-positioned to address these important sustainability opportunities through our standards, conservation, community, and education programming. By leveraging SFI in conjunction with ESG, investors, customers, employees, communities, and policy makers are addressing sustainability, creating transparency and building trust in the marketplace.

This commitment to ESG builds on SFI’s existing commitments to supporting global frameworks and the circular economy. SFI standards directly contribute to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through landscape-level conservation to help conserve biodiversity and an objective focused on climate-smart forestry. SFI’s Project Learning Tree and Project Learning Tree Canada directly contribute to education-related SDGs, and job training through tailored and adaptable educational materials, mentoring, and employer engagement. Supporting this United Nations framework helps SFI and others in our network to make sustainable choices that benefit our shared future.

The forest sector offers renewable products and innovative solutions such as turning pulp-and-paper-mill waste into renewable bioproducts. Innovations such as these support the circular economy—systems that minimize the depletion of non-renewable resources by sustainably managing and regenerating renewable resources therefore preserving or improving the well-being of people and ecosystems. A focus on the entire life cycle of products and maximizing the use of renewable resources makes the circular economy an important part of achieving long-term sustainability goals.

Forests have the potential to play a central role in the circular economy by providing renewable raw materials, so sourcing products from SFI-certified forests is a great way to support the circular economy and conserve our planet’s precious resources.