Practicing Responsible Procurement, Promoting Green Consumption

----B & Q supplier training was successfully held in Shanghai

B&Q (China) supplier training of sustainable management of timber products was successfully held in Shanghai on January 12, 2011. Senior representatives of B&Q China and Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) (China) of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and major supplier representatives who sell flooring, panels, furniture and other wood products through B&Q attended the training.

B&Q presented that it has fully realized that the nature of the worlds timber resources is fragile. B&Q hoped that it can provide customers with wood products sustainably through its own efforts and can maintain leading position in the market and in the legislation. B&Q also hoped that it can blend the sustainable development in the business and hoped that the home decoration products and services with sustainable development would be the customers’ choice.

In the training, B&Q introduced the “Responsible Timber Procurement Policy of B&Q”. The policy covers all wood products or any products containing ingredients of wood that are sold and paper products, such as wood, timber, flooring, and home products. The B&Q will work with the suppliers to establish timber source information, identify the legitimate and the controversy of the sources of wood, further set out the effective action plans to eliminate the potential risk and ensure that all timber come from the forests that are certified independently and are managed well.

B&Q will use the certification of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as the preferred certification. B&Q encourage preferential purchasing products certified by FSC, and encourage purchasing products that are cooperated with WWF-GFTN, TFT, or are certified by PEFC, RA-SmartStep or other related organization.

B&Q will vigorously develop the products certified by FSC and green products and further improve the verification mechanism of information of the timber sources. B&Q also will further cooperate with the GFTN, enhance information exchange, ask for technical support, actively promote the multi-level timber certification and legal timber sources certification of FSC under the premise of fully respecting the commercial operation rules, and guide the market together. As a retailer, B&Q also will make the efforts to lead the consumers to realize the FSC timber certification and thus stimulate consumers’ purchasing behavior.

Currently, the global forest area reduces by the rate of 7.3 million hectares per year that is equivalent to the double area of Paris. The dying rate of global forest is alarming; the forest area that is lost in one minute is equivalent to the area of 20 football fields. Because the forest area is shrinking constantly, the carbon absorption capacity of the global forest also decreased by 20% compared with the capacity 50 years ago. Besides agricultural expansion, mining, plantation construction, infrastructure construction and forest fires, the large scale industrial logging is the main reason of global forest destruction.

Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has been committed to promoting sustainable forest management and responsible purchasing of forest products to curb illegal logging through promoting and improving the management of the rare and threatened forest. Jin Zhonghao, the manager of Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) (China) of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), fully affirmed the significance of the training that was held by B&Q (China) and Global Forest and Trade Network (China) and hoped more and more large wood products supermarkets and wood processing enterprises that were operated in China can carry out responsible wood products trade and sustainable forest management.