Traderbag Featured by the Forest Stewardship Council
We are so honoured to have been recognised by the very organisation whose standards we have built our business around. This month, the Forest Stewardship Council featured Traderbag in a piece on its global news platform, telling the story of two South African brothers working to move retailers away from plastic and towards paper.
A story about choice, told on a global stage
The FSC feature, titled "From plastic to paper", opens with a sobering figure: around 50,000 tonnes of plastic enter South Africa's oceans every year, and plastic can persist in the ocean for hundreds of years before breaking down into microplastics that eventually enter the human food chain. It is against this backdrop that the article introduces our founders, Declan and Daniel Cherry, who started Traderbag to supply customised paper bags to retailers so they can move away from plastic, offering a practical alternative that reduces environmental impact without compromising on quality.
The piece explores why paper was the obvious material choice. Declan explains that paper is renewable, recyclable and naturally biodegrades back into the environment, unlike plastic, which can persist for centuries and break down into microplastics. It also touches on something we talk about often with our own clients: sustainability has stopped being a nice-to-have and has become a business fundamental. The article notes that consumers, shareholders and tightening regulation are all pushing companies to reduce their environmental footprint, and the conversation among retailers has shifted from whether to move to paper, to how to make that transition commercially viable.
Perhaps the section closest to our daily reality on the factory floor is the one on changing perceptions. The article describes how one of the biggest hurdles Traderbag has faced is convincing retailers, long accustomed to plastic, that paper bags can match its strength and reliability, a challenge the brothers say they overcame by letting the product speak for itself through samples and side by side testing.
Why FSC certification matters here
For readers who have seen the FSC label on our bags and wondered exactly what it guarantees, it comes down to traceability. FSC Chain of Custody certification tracks certified material at every step from forest to finished product, so that paper carrying the FSC mark can genuinely be traced back to a responsibly managed forest rather than an unverified or high risk source. For a retailer switching from plastic, this matters because it turns a marketing claim into something auditable. Every bag we produce sits inside that chain, verified by an independent, accredited body rather than taken on trust.
Being featured by FSC is not a small thing to us. FSC certifies operations in more than eighty countries, and its standard is widely regarded as the benchmark for responsible forestry worldwide. To be singled out from among that global network of certificate holders, as a small South African manufacturer, is genuinely humbling. It tells us that the work we do sourcing responsibly, testing rigorously and pushing retailers to make the switch is being noticed well beyond our own market.
What this means for the retailers we work with
If you are a retailer weighing up the move from plastic to paper, this feature is a useful signal. It confirms, from FSC itself, that the sourcing behind your packaging is independently verified rather than self declared. It also reflects something we see in almost every client conversation: retailers are no longer asking whether to make the switch, but how to do it without sacrificing bag strength, print quality or turnaround time. These are the problems Traderbag was built to solve, and it is gratifying to see that recognised on an international stage.
Read the full article here: https://fsc.org/en/newscentre/general-news/from-plastic-to-paper
