Few days back, I attended a stakeholder
consultation meeting and seminar on “FSC Certification in India”. The entire FSC
board was in New Delhi for the meeting and it provided a great opportunity to
learn about FSC and what it stands for. One of the delegates from Germany
showed me train ticket of Deutsche Bahn AG. I was zapped to see FSC
certification logo printed on it! He went on to explain the concept behind FSC
Chain of Custody. It shows that raw material for manufacturer of particular
product (in this case paper) has been sourced from responsibly managed forest. That
is great for the cause of sustainability. Hey, but wait a minute! Does FSC
speak about – water consumption, energy consumption, GHG emission, waste
generation etc.? The answer is no. Well, I am not here to criticize FSC
certification per se, but my intent is to bring out concerns of purchase
professionals and vendors swamped in maze of certifications.
FSC is one of the most reputed and
pervasive third party certification. There is no denying the fact that if we
want wood based product; it is better to have them sourced from responsibly
managed products. But the question is –
is it good enough? For example, take the case of paper. I think there are lots
of environmental concerns with paper ranging from sourcing of pulp to bleaching
of pulp to disposal of paper. So as an organization, I would like to buy paper
which scores not only on base materials of pulp but on entire gamut of paper
manufacturing, use and its disposal which gets captured by life cycle assessment (LCA) of paper. For a purchaser, it would really help if a certification
addresses environmental concerns during entire life cycle of a product. But,
how do we take care of social issue? Moving further, should not a certification
address worker’s health and safety at work places? Do we have a certification
that addresses both environmental and social concerns while buying a product?
For vendors also, there is problem of
array of certifications on their platter but hardly any choice to choose from. There
are plethora of certifications viz. ISO 9001, ISO14001, ROHS, FAIRTRADE, IOAS, OSACH,
SA 8000 etc. besides Code of Conducts of various MNCs. They want to remain in
business but are fed up, as they have to manage and comply with so many
certifications to secure their long-term business growth. They are willing to
comply with certification requirement but each certification has different
documentation requirements. Remember,
everything has a cost! One vendor talking in confidentiality shared with me
that one Code of Conduct audit costs about $1000. Of course, vendors would not
pay from their pocket but it all adds up to cost to the end consumers. Is not
this additional cost of green/sustainable products and services hampering adoption
of these products and services by consumers? What about having a single certification,
based on multiple criteria, that addresses both environmental and social
concerns? Would not it make life easier for both purchaser and vendors?
I don’t think it is impossible, but it
is definitely a huge task. But the problem is how these certification agencies
are going to reconcile their processes in the interest of purchaser and vendors
without compromising their own core competitiveness. The fact that all these
certifications are voluntary in nature, makes this process further tiring. Each certification body has its own set of
accreditation process and auditors with focus on particular sectors. For
example, FSC is relevant to forest wood and wood based products; SA 8000 is
focused on worker’s rights and their health and safety concerns etc. How are
they going to merge this and come up with a new set of process, which satisfy
all accreditation bodies? Another problem would be reconciling what do you
certify – a process or a product? Are industry bodies, government and
certification agencies willing to take up this challenge and make certification
simpler?
One may question role of government in
this space, as these certifications are voluntary in nature. But government does have a stake here because
export from SME sector is very much, may I say, certification driven now.
Governments in developing nations need to take up this issue with certification
agencies, as that would facilitate growth of SMEs leading to higher exports and
export revenue. The governments can at
least facilitate the process and bring SMEs bodies and certification agencies
on table for discussion and reconciliation.
Are consumers loosing out anything in
the process? The whole certification concepts
is based on consumer’s demand for environmentally and socially sound products
and services. If consumers are likely to benefits in terms of reduction in cost
of products and services, vendors are likely to benefits in terms of reduction
in transaction costs for multiple certifications and buyers are likely to
benefit from simplification of certification, who else should have any complaints
about unification of certifications?
