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Collected bulletins, events and resources from Book Chain Project together with news links from external sources.

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This link was published on 7 April 2025

SCA's letter to FSC International - Pausing of FSC certification in Sweden

  • SCA is Europe’s largest forest owner and a major timber, pulp and paper manufacturer.
  • A long-standing member of FSC, it announced its intention to temporarily pause its FSC Forest Management certification in Sweden starting June 1, 2025, due to a series of systemic challenges it sees within the current FSC framework.
    • Still supports FSC: Although SCA is leaving the Swedish FSC system on June 1st, they will remain a member, keep its Controlled Wood and Chain of Custody certifications, and maintain Forest Management certification in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
    • Hopefully temporary: The pause is intended to protect SCA’s ability to meet climate and sustainability goals, not to leave FSC entirely.
    • To prompt dialogue: SCA is calling for a meeting with FSC and stakeholders in Frankfurt to work on solutions collaboratively.
  • SCA
  • Sweden
  • Europe
This resource was published on 7 March 2024

Labour and Environment Risk Tool - For Publishers

Tool

A credible supplier due diligence process begins with assessing and segmenting your suppliers based on risk. This risk tool has been developed to help you do just this. The tool assesses both country level risk and supplier level risk for both environmental and labour rights/health and safety, and you can use it to assess risk across 15 direct supplier types in every country.

The tool belongs to SLR but is freely available to download and use. Please do credit SLR if you reproduce the results or methodology of the tool.

This event was published on 26 June 2023

London Seminar 2023

Seminar | 5 Jul 2023 09:30–17:30 London

Join us at this year's Seminar, with the theme Transparency: an Open Book. We'll explore the increasing expectations on companies to gather, share and disclose information on their sustainability impacts across the value chain - for example to understand the impacts on nature, ensuring commodities are deforestation free, human rights due diligence, Greenhouse Gas emissions, and options to make our books more circular.

The seminar is our annual event where we bring the publishing community and our stakeholders together from across book supply chains to discuss the hot issues, be inspired by the latest innovations, and make new connections. The event will be attended by staff from the 28 publishers that participate in the Book Chain Project, as well as representatives from the pulp & paper mills, printers, certification bodies, NGOs and other stakeholders who we engage with.

The Seminar will be a full day of activities, guest speaker presentations and opportunities for networking and catching up, including a guided tour around the Wetland Centre.

Attendance is limited, please register below and we will confirm your place.
Please email us if you have any dietary requirements.

Engaging the value chain sustainability
5 Jul 2023 10:00–10:45 London

speaker_125
Joanna Yarrow
Chief Sustainability Officer, Founding Partner, M&C Saatchi Group, M&C Saatchi LIFE

Joanna is an international expert in sustainable living & a respected voice in sustainable business.

She is Chief Sustainability Officer for the M&C Saatchi Group (the world’s largest independent creative solutions company) & Founding Partner of M&C Saatchi LIFE – a strategic creative consultancy making sustainable living mainstream. She is also NED at sustainable placemaking company Human Nature (designing & places that make sustainable living easy & attractive) & sits on P&G’s global sustainability advisory board.

With over 25 years’ experience in applying sustainability principles to projects ranging from household makeovers to multinational business strategies, Joanna brings confidence, humour, vision & clarity to the challenges of net zero, ESG & healthy, sustainable living.

Biodiversity
5 Jul 2023 10:45–11:30 London

speaker_121
Jake White
Head of Legal (Advocacy & Campaigns), WWF-UK

Jake White trained at a regional commercial law firm and then moved into the City to practise intellectual property. However that didn’t suit hence he joined government where he had 10 very stimulating years in the Government Legal Service advising on a range of areas from outer space, State aid to nuclear energy. Jake left government to join the third sector in 2012 where he worked first with Friends of the Earth and most recently at WWF where he is head of legal advocacy.

He has a particular interest in equality and human rights and has worked with NGOs in the Middle East and for Britain’s equality and human rights regulator (the Equality and Human Rights Commission). He is particularly interested in exploring this intersection in his work including in relation, for example, in relation to the great forests of the world and the peoples that live in them.

Human Rights
5 Jul 2023 11:45–12:30 London

Human Rights

speaker_122
Francesca de Meillac
Advisor, Shift

As an Advisor at Shift, Francesca works with companies and financial institutions to support their implementation of the UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs).

Francesca was previously Principal Consultant at Environmental Resources Management (ERM), where she led ERM’s UK human rights team, and global technical community on modern slavery and human rights. Francesca advised multinational companies to assess and address human rights risks, build internal capacity and develop and implement fit-for-purpose policies and management systems. She also worked closely with financial institutions including development finance institutions (DFIs), commercial banks, export credit agencies and private equity on assessing and managing human rights risks in accordance with international standards including the UNGPs, IFC Performance Standards and Equator Principles IV.

She has international work experience across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America including on-the-ground experience conducting stakeholder consultation, human rights impact assessments (HRIA), environmental and social due diligence (ESDD) and monitoring. Francesca is also experienced in designing and delivering training and capacity building on social performance, human rights and sustainable finance.

Francesca holds an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and a MA in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University. She is from Trinidad & Tobago.

speaker_123
Zuzana Mocilenkova
Advisor, Shift

As an Advisor at Shift, Zuzana works with companies and other strategic partners to support their implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

Prior to joining Shift, Zuzana worked as an independent business and human rights consultant, and as Principal Consultant at Labor Solutions, a social enterprise using technology to advance human rights throughout company value chains. In these roles, Zuzana supported businesses across different sectors to use worker voice tools and developed training content on effective grievance mechanisms in line with the UNGPs.

Prior to being a consultant, Zuzana was Head of Ethical Trade and Human Rights at Stella McCartney for over 7 years. In this role, Zuzana led the practical implementation of the UNGPs across the full due diligence spectrum and traveled extensively throughout the company’s sourcing regions in Europe and Asia. Here she gained hands-on experience working with suppliers, workers and local experts to identify root causes of human rights risks and design and deliver capacity building programs. This included carrying out stakeholder engagement, improving purchasing practices and encouraging company participation in collaborative industry programs. Zuzana has particular expertise in small, artisanal and informal fashion supply chains.

Zuzana holds a Master of Applied Human Rights from the University of York. In her thesis, she researched participatory approaches to addressing discrimination against the Roma minority population in Slovakia. Zuzana is a Slovak and British national.

Deforestation-free pulp & paper
5 Jul 2023 14:00–14:45 London

speaker_119
Jade Saunders
Executive Director, World Forest ID

Jade Saunders is the Executive Director of World Forest ID, an international non-profit, with the mission to build a global reference database of forest risk commodities including timber, to aid verification of species and harvest origin of products in global trade.

Jade has over 20 years of experience working on forest governance, trade and environmental crime, most notably as an Associate Fellow of the Environment and Society Programme at Chatham House and as Senior Policy Analyst at Forest Trends. She has also served as strategic advisor to ForestMind and policy analyst at the European Forest Institute FLEGT Facility.

At World Forest ID, in addition to developing the organization's overall strategy, Jade's main focus is on overseeing the data science and machine learning workstream. She works closely with governments and industry on mainstreaming scientific testing for supply chain traceability and promoting the practical application of the World Forest ID reference database.

Climate action in the supply chain
5 Jul 2023 14:45–15:30 London

speaker_124
Lydia Elliott
Supply Chains Manager, We Mean Business Coalition

As Supply Chains Manager at the We Mean Business Coalition, Lydia Elliott works across supply chain climate action and net zero strategy. For the SME Climate Hub, a core initiative of the We Mean Business Coalition, Lydia works to enable large companies value chain action and helps to develop the tools that small and medium sized businesses need to take climate action.

Breakout sessions
5 Jul 2023 16:00–17:00 London

Type
Seminar
Date
5 Jul 2023 09:30–17:30 London
This event is in the past
This link was published on 26 January 2021

UK sets out law to curb illegal deforestation and protect rainforests

The UK government has proposed to introduce a new law to prohibit large business operating in the UK from using products that are from illegally deforested land as per local laws. Businesses that fail to carry out due diligence on their supply chains and make that information public would face fines. This proposed legislation will be on consultation for six weeks. Critics say that the proposal is flawed partly because the local laws on forest protections might be absent or have loopholes.

  • Guardian
  • United Kingdom
  • Supply chain
  • Due diligence
  • UK government
  • illegally deforested
  • Forest protections
This resource was published on 1 May 2020

Good practice recruitment of overseas workers

Slides

Through our learnings in this area, we decided to create a document detailing good practice when it comes to overseas workers. It covers due diligence processes, contracts, communication with workers, interviews, guidance on how to manage ID documents as well as incentivisation of returning workers and remediation for any workers that have paid recruitment fees.

Select your preferred language from the options below
This link was published on 26 March 2020

ECHA adds four substances to REACH candidate list

The European Chemicals Agency has included four more substances on its REACH candidate list of Substances of Very High Concerns (SVHCs), which now contains 205 chemicals. The list comprises of substances that may have serious effects on human health or the environment and which are candidates for eventual inclusion in the Authorization list (Annex XIV).
The substances included in the Candidate List for authorisation on 16 January 2020 are:
• Diisohexyl phthalate (CAS 71850-09-4) – added due to its toxicity to reproduction
• 2-benzyl-2-dimethylamino-4'-morpholinobutyrophenone (CAS 119313-12-1) – added due to its toxicity to reproduction
• 2-methyl-1-(4-methylthiophenyl)-2-morpholinopropan-1-one (CAS 71868-10-5) – added due to its toxicity to reproduction)
• Perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS) and its salts – added as it causes probable serious effects to human health and the environment

  • ECHA
  • Europe
  • SVHCs
  • REACH
  • The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)
  • Diisohexyl phthalate
  • 2-benzyl-2-dimethylamino-4'-morpholinobutyrophenone
  • methyl
  • morpholinopropan
  • Perfluorobutane sulfonic acid
This link was published on 5 March 2020

2019 was the year #Human Rights due diligence came of age

With lots of emphasis laid on the environmental matters, social and anti-corruption matters gain insufficient attention. Evidence shows that current transparency and voluntary regimes are not yielding strong human rights due diligence by companies. Europe’s leadership in the next year on human rights and environmental due diligence legislation has never been more needed.

  • EU Reporter
  • Europe
  • Human Rights
  • Environmental due diligence legislation
  • environmental matters
  • anti-corruption matters
  • strong human rights due diligence
This link was published on 24 December 2019

Southeast Asia – are chemical controls taking hold?

The trend of setting up a national inventory of chemicals – already seen in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan – is moving south. The Philippines and Vietnam have existing inventories, while Laos, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia also have plans for one.
Despite regulatory hurdles that might have caused due to disparate regulations and approaches across the region, the overall trend – if slower than other regions – is a shift in focus from primarily GHS-based requirements towards more comprehensive, risk-based chemicals management regimes that mandate registration before use.

  • Chemical Watch
  • China
  • Indonesia
  • Japan
  • Korea (Democratic People's Republic)
  • Malaysia
  • Philippines
  • Taiwan (China)
  • Thailand
  • Vietnam
  • South East Asia & Indian Continent
  • GHS-based requirements
  • risk-based chemicals
This link was published on 24 December 2019

A call for EU human rights and environmental due diligence legislation

Early December, over 100 NGOs, trade unions and networks stress their demands for binding rules on corporate respect for human rights and the environment. They point out that although some companies are taking actions to meet their responsibilities in their global operations, there are many others linked to serious abuses, including modern slavery, gender discrimination, corruption, deforestation, etc. Current EU policy and legislation fails to adequately address this challenge. They propose that 1) companies and investors are required to carry out human rights andenvironmental due diligence; 2) new binding EU legislation that increases protection for individuals and communities, workers and their representatives, human rights defenders, and the environment, is passed.

  • European Coalition for Corporate Justice
  • Europe
  • Deforestation
  • Corruption
  • Human Rights
  • modern slavery
  • NGOs
  • Environment
  • Environmental due diligence legislation
  • Trade Unions
  • gender discrimination
This link was published on 4 September 2019

Four new substances added to the SVHC Candidate List

ECHA has added four new substances to the Candidate List due to their toxicity to reproduction, endocrine disruption and a combination of other properties of concern on 16 July 2019. The four substances are listed below:
1. 2-methoxyethyl acetate
2. Tris (4-nonylphenyl, branched and linear) phosphite (TNPP) with ≥ 0.1% w/w of 4-nonylphenol, branched and linear (4-NP)
3. 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoro-2-(heptafluoropropoxy)propionic acid, its salts and its acyl halides (covering any of their individual isomers and combinations thereof)
4. 4-tert-butylphenol

  • ECHA
  • ECHA
  • substances
  • Candidate List
  • SVHC Candidate List
  • toxicity
  • reproduction
  • endocrine disruption
  • 2-methoxyethyl acetate