A number of companies including Adidas, British Airways, Kingfisher and Sainsbury's will provide the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project with information on their impacts on forests and what they are doing to shrink their forest footprints.

In July the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project, a U.K. not-for-profit, sent questionnaires to more than 200 companies in the Fortune 500 and FTSE 350. Companies were chosen based on if their supply chains include beef, biofuels, leather, palm oil, soya, timber or other materials that are considered "forest risk commodities."

“The Forest Footprint Disclosure Project offers the Adidas Group a good tool to analyze and screen the company's direct and indirect forest footprint in its global business operations," said Frank Henke, Adidas' global director of group social and environmental affairs. "Our participation in this project will help guide internal efforts to create transparency in our supply chain.”

The questionnaire was designed to help companies figure out their impact on forests and how they could improve their operations. The results will be summarized in an annual report starting in January 2010. The report will identify strategies that companies have developed to avoid risks related to certain commodities, and the report will also call out the companies that decline or ignore the questionnaire.

More detailed results will be shared with 26 asset manager companies that are endorsing the project and that believe unsustainable commodities could bring risk to their investments.
 
"This is not simply about who is top of the class, this is an exercise to bring together knowledge, working practices and understanding from across U.K. and global commerce and to share this information to reduce the impact of global deforestation," said British Airways' environment executive, Patrick Spink.

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