Stimulating and reflecting good practices in floriculture, the FSI Basket of standards is evolving and including additional environmental benchmarking criteria with an emphasis on reliable data and record-keeping.
Supporting mainstreaming of good practices
The additional environmental benchmarking is not a new standard nor replacing current benchmarks. It is a set of benchmarking criteria supporting the mainstreaming of environmental principles across compliance standards, strengthening the FSI basket as international reference for sustainable practices.
The environmental scope is open to standards that are already in the basket as well as other standards who comply with the criteria. The Standards in the current FSI Basket have all been informed and invited to consider the inclusion of these criteria into their certification schemes.
After 2020, sustainable production under FSI will be defined according to the combined benchmarks on Agricultural, Social and Environmental practice.
Three standards already included in the new environmental scope
On a voluntary basis, the first 3 scheme owners have already signed the policy agreement working towards adherence to the 2020 criteria for benchmarking. Kenya Flower Council Silver Standard, Florverde® Sustainable Flowers, MPS GAP and MPS-ABC have been admitted and recognized for the environmental scope of the FSI Basket of Standards, agreeing to comply with the environmental criteria with a transition period until end of 2020.
Standards adopting the new criteria contribute to pro-actively preparing growers and the sector for relevant market demands through:
- the adoption of standardized record keeping on key inputs;
- the assurance of quality performance of standards and audits;
- transparency and the comparison of performance over time and space.
Encouraging stakeholders to adopt and recognize
This environmental scope is still voluntary and not added to the current Basket. But adoption will be required after 2020. Meanwhile, users of the FSI Basket and reporting FSI members can start including the new dimension in their measuring and already show improvements and best practices, as well as encouraging standards and growers to adopt record keeping by recognizing their efforts.
You can find the full explanatory document with more details about the new environmental scope and the benchmarking criteria in the Resources directory of the webiste.
