The availability of plentiful and healthy forests is critical to our business and our ability to make forest products that consumers want and need. Our commitment to sustainable forestry helps ensure the future of North America's forests and of our business. It also is a direct reflection of two of Georgia-Pacific's Guiding Principles. The first states that we will conduct all affairs lawfully and with integrity. The second is compliance. We strive for 10,000% compliance, with 100% of employees fully complying 100% of the time to ensure excellence in environmental, safety and all other areas of compliance.
Since GP does not own timberland, our sustainable forestry strategy is directly related to the procurement practices that supply wood and fiber to our manufacturing facilities. In the United States, GP began tracking its environmental performance more than 10 years ago. In 2001, the company completed its first third-party audits to ensure that our wood procurement practices measure up to the standards of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI). Furthermore, landowners who supply our timber are encouraged to continue to grow forests responsibly for future generations.
Most recently, GP worked with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) - U.S. on a project that studied the potential applicability of FSC family forest programs to small family forest landowners in the Southeast. As a group, family forest landowners play a key role in the forestry community as they own 42 percent of the forest land in the U.S. They are especially important to GP because about 80 percent of the timber volume into our facilities comes from these family forest landowners.
For further information about the contribution of these Southeastern family forest landowners and the challenges they face, you can read our Field Test Partnership Project Report