Forest reimagined: from city forest to pencil case

June 3, 2026

Pick up a Stabilo pencil and you are holding the product of a commitment made almost 30 years ago – long before sustainability became a corporate buzzword. In 1998 Schwan-Stabilo became the world's first pencil manufacturer to receive FSC certification, a decision rooted not in market pressure but in a clear sense of responsibility. Nearly three decades later, that commitment is still the foundation of how the company sources its wood.

"At Schwan-Stabilo, we know our customers demand sustainable products," says Radek Zeman of Stabilo's Czech operation in Český Krumlov. "So we require certified materials from our suppliers and motivate them to get certified themselves. We want to manufacture with respect for nature, so that we return what we take from it. That's why we have FSC."

That story is at the heart of Forest Reimagined (or Lesy Jinak in Czech), a six-episode video series produced by FSC Czech Republic. It follows the journey of certified wood from forest to pencil factory. It starts in a municipality-owned woodland on the outskirts of a historical city of Olomouc, in the heart of Moravia in Eastern Czechia.

Czech forests have had a difficult decade. A severe bark beetle outbreak, driven largely by the vulnerability of spruce monoculture forests to drought stress, laid waste to vast areas of woodland and forced a reckoning with decades of single-species forestry of the 20^th century. The damage made one thing clear: single-species and even-aged forests were not resilient enough to withstand climate change and endure. FSC-aligned management – with its emphasis on mixed-species uneven-aged stands, selective harvesting, natural regeneration, and leaving deadwood in place to support biodiversity – offered a concrete path forward.

The municipal forests of Olomouc have taken that path. David Janásek, director of city’s forest enterprise, describes what FSC certification has come to mean in practice beyond the forest itself: "Given that our forests are owned by the city of Olomouc, the certificate is an important tool for communicating with the public." For city-managed forests, FSC serves a dual purpose: it opens doors to buyers who require FSC certified timber, and it gives forest managers a credible, independently verified way to demonstrate the quality of their stewardship to the citizens and local stakeholder groups.

A share of that certified Olomouc timber finds its way into Stabilo's production in Český Krumlov, completing a supply chain that runs from a city forest to one of the world's most recognisable stationery brands.

Forest Reimagined captures this ecosystem at a meaningful moment. The series follows forestry professionals across the country – from church-owned estates to city forests – and ends where the wood does: on the Stabilo factory floor. It is part of a wider trend. The number of FSC-certified municipal forests in the Czech Republic has more than doubled over the past decade, with over thirty city and municipal forest managers now certified. Stabilo has been on the other end of that chain for twenty-seven years.