Thursday, 14 July 2016
World Leaders Gather at FSC-certified Roundtable at G7 Summit 2016
© 2016 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
The G7 Summit held in Japan this year had a special feature – almost all the wooden products that were used for the event, from the head roundtable where the G7 leaders met to the lunch ‘bento’ boxes, were made of FSC-certified wood. It even featured a not-so-common FSC-certified product, cypress essential oil.
The summit took place in Kashiko Island of Shima city, Mie Prefecture, Japan in May 2016.
The forest owners’ cooperative Owase, an organization that has been with FSC for more than a decade, was instrumental in the creation of the many beautiful FSC-certified products. Almost all of them were designed and tailor-made by Japanese craftsmen, with 100 per cent locally sourced FSC-certified wood. The head roundtable, for example, was made using a Japanese traditional joinery technique from solid wood from Owase, Mie Prefecture – a traditional forestry area in Japan which is famous for Japanese cypress and where the first FSC forest management-certified forest is located.
The FSC-certified cypress oil was a delight. The cypress oil was extracted from FSC-certified Japanese cypress wood. Its stress-relieving and soothing properties were probably enhanced by the fact that it was sourced from well-managed forests.
FSC-certified products at the G7 Ise-Shima Summit:
Roundtable used for the discussions
Dining table (dinner)
Dining table (lunch)
Flower vase
Pen tray
Desk
Name plates
Coasters
Desk mats
Table set in Sanpu-so (guest house)
Lunch boxes
Essential oil extracted from Japanese cypress
Frieze boards in the dining room of the media centre