FSC North America Announces 2023 Leadership Awards

The broad array of this year's winners demonstrates the many ways people are using the FSC system to achieve organizational success. They span Indigenous groups, forest owners, architects, builders, consumer product companies, and more who contribute to the movement toward responsible sourcing and forest management.

Winners of the 2023 FSC Leadership Awards are as follows:

• Groupements Forestiers du Bas-Saint-Laurent, the largest FSC-certified group in Quebec, Canada. They have maintained a complex forest management certificate of over 4,500 members with 225,000 hectares for over 10 years.
• Galleher, LLC, one of the two largest wholesale wood flooring distributors in the U.S., for promoting and selling FSC-certified wood flooring products for more than 15 years while educating specifiers about FSC certification and promoting the use of certified products.
• Jeff Martin & Yulex for pioneering FSC-certified natural rubber and latex products and natural rubber-based components that provide alternatives to common and widely-used petroleum-based products.
• Mark Richey Woodworking for bringing green manufacturing and sustainable practices to complex corporate, institutional, and residential interior and exterior architectural millwork and furniture projects across the U.S. MRW has been FSC-certified since 2011.
• Metrocolor de México S.A. de C.V., a graphics and printing company, for demonstrating their long-standing commitment to sustainable practices that ensures the paper they purchase is sourced from responsibly managed forests. Metrocolor has carried FSC certification since 2012.
• Monadnock Paper Mills, for its Unplastic Initiative - nine eco-friendly, FSC-certified fiber-based alternative products. Remarkably, Monadnock's sustainable solutions have already replaced more than 10 billion conventional plastic gift cards worldwide.
• Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Bureau of Forestry for 25 years of FSC forest management certification, proving success across a wide range of forest conditions, multiple agencies, and evolving public expectations.
• Samsung Canada for partnering with FSC Canada in a fundraising campaign promoting the health and protection of Canadian forests in honor of Earth Month 2023.
• The Good Charcoal Company for 100% FSC-certified acacia hardwood charcoal sourced in Namibia. Reduction of the acacia bushes out-of-control growth has helped restore equilibrium to the ecosystem, aiding the cheetah and other local plants and animals.
• Wahkohtowin Development GP Inc. for partnering with FSC Canada and Green First at the intersecting areas of land stewardship, sustainability, respecting & upholding indigenous rights, climate change mitigation and cultural revitalization.
• Wakefield BioChar for producing FSC-certified biochar, which improves the health of soil, and providing education about the environmental benefits of biochar, including that using biochar reduces greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.

In addition, the following building projects were awarded a 2023 FSC Leadership Award:

• Hines, WZMH Architects, 3XN, MKA, and Eastern Construction for 100% FSC-certified mass timber in T3 Bayside Phase 1 along Toronto’s waterfront, a 262,000 square foot, 10-storey mass timber office building.
• Samsara, Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, WRNS Studio, and Canopy Project Management for 100% FSC-certified wood used in Samsara’s 133,500 square foot interior build-out of their San Francisco headquarters, the 100% FSC-certified mass timber building 1 De Haro.
• Emerson Collective, Redbrick LMD, Winstanley Architects & Planners, Adjaye & Associates, StructureCraft, Banneker Communities, and HEP Construction for Sycamore & Oak, a 23,000 square foot, 100% FSC-certified mass timber retail village in Washington, D.C.’s Congress Heights neighborhood.