UK remains major player in illegal timber trade despite fact that sustainable and cost effective alternatives already exist
8 August, 2008
A new report from the environmental group Greenpeace
shows how the UK construction industry can have a
positive influence on the management practices in forests around the world. The
report, entitled "Setting a new standard: alternatives to unsustainable plywood
in the UK construction industry" is a
practical guide for companies wanting to avoiding the use of illegal plywood on
construction sites.
The demand for timber from the international marketplace, including the UK, is a key driver in this destruction. This timber can be used for high value products like flooring or end up as ‘throwaway' products like plywood. In recent years, Greenpeace has repeatedly exposed the use of illegal and unsustainable plywood from the threatened rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea being used as hoardings around UK construction sites.
This guide sets out why companies must respond to this issue as a matter of urgency.
It shows how to avoid unsustainable plywood and also provides a step-by-step guide to obtaining socially and environmentally responsible timber, certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Buying FSC certified timber is the best way to ensure your timber comes from responsible sources.
"Less than a fifth of the biofuel used on UK roads meets
environmental standards intended to safeguard human rights and
guarantee carbon savings, figures released today show.
"The Renewable Fuels Agency
says just 19% of the biofuel supplied under the government's new
initiative to use biofuel to help tackle global warming met the green
standard. For the remaining 81% of the biofuel, suppliers could not say
where it came from, or could not prove that it had been produced in a
sustainable way."
But even this "green" standard is misleading, as it ignores the side-effects of biofuel production such as massive deforestation:
"The standard does not include carbon emissions from indirect effects
such as changes in land use caused by biofuel planting, which experts
have warned could cancel out their environmental benefits."
Posted by jamie — 31 July 2008 at 3:53pm
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Comments
The bad news is that the vote on illegal timber amongst members of the European Commission has been delayed (they're looking at legislation to ban dodgy wood from Europe) and now probably won't take place until September. The good news is that it gives us all a chance to have some fun in the meantime (and do some creative campaigning at the same time).
We all love forests and we want you to show the powers that be in the EU just how much. The forests have already made their own effort, but here's what we'd like you to do:
Regular visitors to our
website might have noticed that a few days ago, we launched a cyber action
against the Italian company Ferrero, a major user of palm oil and maker
of Nutella and Ferrero Rocher.
Well, we’re delighted to
report that, before we even had the chance to email our supporters about
it, we’ve had another success in the protection of Indonesia’s rainforests and
peatlands - and of the threatened species that live there and, of course, the climate.
Posted by jamie — 4 July 2008 at 5:38pm
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I've been playing around with Google Earth's KML spreadsheet as we're thinking of ideas we can contribute from the UK office to the Greenpeace layer in the Global Awareness section (recently added: highlights of our marine work), and I was checking out some of the showcased examples of good visual mapping done by other organisations. Amongst them, I came across this little beauty which visually represents the differing rates of deforestation around the world and it's quite, quite brilliant.
