What is Love Your Forests?

Love Your Forests is an unique campaign - we are asking business, NGOs and you to come together to ensure our forests survive.

Beginning this year the United Nations (UN) in the UN International Year of Forests will be raising awareness of sustainable forest management.

To support this WWF and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) along with leading businesses in the forest industry are working to provide a solution to reduce our forest footprint and to love our forests.

Starting this year we will be actively promoting and supporting the FSC eco-label.

The FSC is an international network to promote responsible management of the world’s forests - it brings people together to find solutions to the problems created by bad forestry practices and to reward good forest management.

How can I love my forests? WWF believes that you can Love Your Forests in many ways...by recycling, buying recycled, reducing over use of paper and timber and importantly, buying forest friendly timber and paper products.

How do I buy forest friendly timber and paper products?

It’s easy! When buying timber and paper products just look for the FSC eco-label. The FSC eco-label is your assurance that the timber and paper product that you bought did not come from illegally logged forests and that it supports well-managed forests.

WWF understands that there is a confusing range of eco-labels out there for you to choose from - we will try to help you find FSC in two ways:

• The WWF logo will appear next to the FSC logo on some products that are FSC-certified. Look for us next to the FSC logo.
• We will work with businesses to help them provide you with information about timber and paper product choices.

See our Love Your Forests Partners

Love Your Forests? Why?

The WWF Love Your Forests campaign has been launched in 2011 to coincide with the UN International Year of Forests. In the past 10 years more than 1.3 million square kilometres of the world’s forests have been destroyed – an area roughly the size of Tasmania every six months. Most of these forests were biologically-rich tropical forests and home to such animals as orang-utans, tigers, and gorillas. Some of this logging is also illegal - it has been estimated that Australia imports more than $400 million worth of illegal timber and wood products each year.

Love Your Forests is a way for you to help stop this destruction.

Australians are major consumers of forest products and we use around 6.6 million cubic metres of solid timber and 4 million tonnes of paper every year, or about 550 kg per person. Because we import major quantities of pulp and paper as well as sawn timber, our forest ‘footprint’ extends to over 31 countries. In a number of these countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific there are serious concerns about the legality and sustainability of forestry.

Love Your Forests is a way for all of us to help reduce the amount of forest resources we consume and switch to more environmentally sustainable forest products.

See how you can make a difference…How can I help love my forest?