ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) has published a new, voluntary standard for chain of custody (CoC) of wood and wood-based products (together with cork and lignified materials other than wood, such as bamboo, and their products).
While the standard does not cover forest management, it can be used to transfer information about the source of the wood-based product.
According to ISO, the standard is intended to enable tracking of material from different categories of source to finished products and has several purposes. It can facilitate business-to-business communications by providing a common framework that allows businesses to “speak the same language” when describing their chain of custody system.
Purchasers can use the standard document to evaluate the information they receive from suppliers to help identify suitable input material.
This information can then be used together with a set of specified criteria to determine whether a product/input material fulfils the conditions for the intended use. Other standards and certification schemes can use the standard as a reference regarding chain of custody systems.
