Honka granted PEFC Certification: The raw material for Honka log houses felled from certified Finnish Forests
Press release 15.10.2012
PEFC Finland has granted log house and vacation home manufacturer Honka the right to use the PEFC logo. The origin of each Honka log house can be traced; the wood raw material used always originates in certified Finnish forests.
“It is important to our company that our log houses are manufactured following the principles of ecological sustainability, starting with the raw material we use. Living in a Honka log house, you can be sure that for each tree felled to manufacture the logs used for construction, a new sapling was planted, and in time the saplings will grow into a forest. When purchasing wood, Honka is committed to sustainable forestry where nature values and wood production are in balance. For many years now, we have only accepted trees felled in certified Finnish forests as raw material for our log houses. As a token of this, we have now been granted the right to use the PEFC logo for our log houses,” says President and CEO of Honkarakenne Mikko Kilpeläinen.
The PEFC logo indicates that Honka has a certified wood origin monitoring system that meets the requirements of the PEFC system. The logo also makes consumers’ choices easier: everyone can make responsible purchase decisions that are beneficial to the environment. Products manufactured from renewable wood raw material are often a more ecological option than other materials.
Log houses built of coniferous wood originating in a certified Finnish forest are an ecological type of housing. The energy consumption of the industrial production of massive wood is only approximately 50% of the energy required for cement production and 20% of the energy required for brick production. Honka also utilises wood raw material efficiently. Leftover sawdust from manufacture is used to heat homes, as raw material in district heating production.
PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes) is an international forest certification system that promotes ecologically, socially and financially sustainable forestry around the world. Approximately ten per cent of the world’s forests are certified – and two thirds of them, some 245M hectares, have been certified according to PEFC requirements. There are PEFC-certified forests in dozens of countries. Approximately 95 per cent of Finland’s industrially utilised forests are certified according to Finland’s PEFC system.
