The Brazilian Forest Service released an application for smartphones and tablets that uses QR codes to help verify the legality of traded timber, according to Fordaq.
An agent using the application will be able to scan QR codes placed onto bundles of wood that contain information about that specific shipment that was submitted to Brazil’s Chain of Custody System by logging companies operating within the country’s sustainable forest management regime.
The forest service told Fordaq, “The aim of this application is to provide transparency on forest concessions activities to improve the confidence of timber buyers that the material being offered for sale can be tracked through the system to demonstrate legality.”
The data can produce, among other things, geographic coordinates for the logs and sawn wood.
The app is the latest in a number of technological solutions to fighting the illegal timber trade. HF previously reported on a team of scientists at the United States Forest Products laboratory who have developed a device that can detect the species of logs in a matter of seconds. The scientists behind the project hope it will catch illegal timber smuggled under legal species names.
