The Green Guide.

Evolving Greener Forestry Labels

Pine’s efforts, and those of the 4,500 other FSC-certified companies around the world, are definitely worth it. Only a fifth of remaining forests are intact enough to provide habitat for the long-term survival of native plants and animals, according to the World Resources Institute. In addition to the Amazon, we should protect forests of North America’s boreal zone, which "make up a quarter of the earth’s remaining original forest," according to Scott Weidensaul, a nature writer, in The New York Times.

The boreal canopies house "some three billion individuals of nearly 300 species" of birds, Weidensaul writes.

Forests also help cool the Earth by absorbing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, holding up to 50 percent more than the atmosphere.

But despite promising trends in forest replanting efforts, "deforestation continues at an alarming rate" of more than 32 million acres per year, according to Mette Loyche Wilkie, coordinator of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005.

Founded in 1993, FSC has quadrupled its certified forest space during the last five years to 133 million acres worldwide.

Although other certification systems have emerged during the last 10 years, FSC remains the "gold standard" backed by many environmental groups, says Ian Hanna, director of the certified forestry program at Northwest Natural Resource Group, the FSC-accredited body that certified the O’Neill Pine forests.