"Earlier this year someone was extolling the importance of going “from niche to norm” and I have to admit that I was somewhat dismissive at the time of what I considered marketing jargon.
Last weekend I was purchasing wrapping paper for a birthday present, and it struck me that, rather than having to limit my choice to the one or two FSC-certified options, I was able to select the paper that was most suitable for the recipient as all the wrapping paper on display carried an FSC label. What’s more, there wasn’t any plastic packaging to dispose of. How things have changed over the last decade. It made me reconsider my initial reaction to marketing speak!
Of course, an early example of this in FSC terms was the shift to FSC-certified toilet paper. Instead of asking my friends and family if they wouldn’t mind looking out for the tick-tree logo when purchasing tissue products, now I simply refer people to their toilet rolls if they are not sure what the FSC logo looks like (although even this is a rare occurrence now). The same is true for many household wood and paper products, whether it be garden furniture, kitchen utensils or books. In many sectors, certification is now the norm.
As we see the front-runners in other forest-product supply chains, whether it be Dancing Leopard’s FSC-certified viscose clothing
or Pirelli’s tyres made with FSC-certified rubber, we have to hope that these too will lead the way for others and that we will see the transition “from niche to norm” become, in itself, the normal pattern."