Bunnings has a zero-tolerance approach to illegally logged timber. Our goal is to ensure all timber and wood products supplied to Bunnings originate from legal and well-managed forest operations.
We have made significant progress in this area, with more than 99 per cent of our whole timber product now sourced from low-risk plantation or other legally verified forest operations. Most of Bunnings’ timber products are sourced from independently certified forests or from forests with demonstrated progress towards achieving independent certification.
Our Responsible Timber Sourcing Policy was established in 2003 and revised in 2018 to include a commitment that all native forest products will originate from third party certified forests by December 2020. This requires all timber to be independently certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®), Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) or equivalent standard, with FSC® preferred in highly contentious regions.
COVID-19 has had a material impact on some of our suppliers and their ability to achieve the December 2020 goal set out under the Policy. COVID-19 has caused delays through business and government shutdowns, and closures of international and domestic borders. These impacts are adversely affecting the ability of third parties to access forests and workplaces to complete the independent certification process. Due to these unforeseen and exceptional circumstances, Bunnings has re-evaluated its timeline for a small number of suppliers to achieve the original December 2020 commitment.
In order to honour the intention of our Policy and support suppliers who have been adversely impacted by COVID-19, we have released an Addendum to our Policy which grants an extension to a small number of suppliers with demonstrated progress towards achieving certification. Each supplier has agreed to a timeline to complete certification and interim targets to ensure key milestones are achieved.
You can learn more about our responsible timber sourcing actions over the last two decades below.