Responsible Purchasing

As members of the Timber Trade Federation (TTF), to whom it can and does turn for expertise and guidance, RJC AGENCIES is required to demonstrate that it does all that is possible to purchase responsibly, i.e. it:

• Sources timber products from legal and responsible sources
• Observes good practice in respect of ethical procurement policies
• Recognizes the goals of both the Forest Stewardship Council® and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)
• Utilizes standard forms and questionnaires to enable buyers and suppliers alike to provide and share information on the provenance of its timber
• Already complies with EU timber regulations regarding the known sourcing of illegal timber and obligations to environmental due diligence
• Visits supplying sawmills on a regular basis

What Other Safeguards Do We Have?

• Ghana has signed up to the EU's Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) to help achieve responsibility in the form of Forest Law enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) licences
• At the time of writing some of the bigger mills in Ghana are already making progress independently in an effort to comply with the requirements of the FSC®
• At Meanwhile, in Cameroon, our suppliers have been making similar progress and can supply with an Origineet Légalité des Bois (OLB) certificate

Why Choose Wood?

It’s a good question. But there are some good reasons why you should choose it!

• It actually has a role to play in helping to protect the global environment
• It is responsibly sourced, recyclable, biodegradable and highly energy-efficient
• Evaluated environmentally across its entire life-cycle, it compares very favourably with alternative materials
• More trees grow in the UK now than a century ago - around 30 times the country’s annual consumption
• It use far less energy to convert timber into a usable building material than it does to manufacture concrete or steel
• The same thickness of timber will retain 15 times as much heat as concrete, 400 times as much as steel, and 1770 times as much as aluminium
• This lower fuel bills and CO2 levels because less energy is required for heating
• Forests and trees absorb 25% of global fossil fuel emissions of CO2. One cubic metre of wood absorb in 8 tonnes of CO2 and timber products continue to store carbon
• Timber is usually recycled and biodegrades easily
• It’s natural. And beautiful!