Archived press release

Help save the rainforests. avoid hardwood garden furniture says foe

21 April 2000

A new survey published today (Good Friday) by green campaigners Friends of the Earth and Global Witness shows that most retailers and suppliers don't know where the hardwood garden furniture they sell comes from - and fewer still know about the social and environmental impact of these products.

Friends of the Earth and Global Witness are calling on the public to avoid buying hardwood garden furniture over Easter unless retailers and suppliers can prove the wood comes from sources which do not damage people's lives and the world's tropical rainforests. And if people do buy hardwood furniture, they should insist that it carries an FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certificate, guaranteeing that it is sustainably produced.

The Easter holiday is one of the biggest weekends in the year for people visiting garden centres and marks the start of the garden furniture selling season. The garden furniture market in the UK is worth over £220m. Forty per cent of the market volume is wooden products and this figure is likely to rise as the fashion for hardwood furniture is growing.There are mounting concerns that the increasing sales of hardwood furniture are contributing to serious environmental and social problems in the world's remaining tropical forests.

The survey reveals that most furniture comes from countries with serious questions over sourcing of timber. There are many claims being made about the sourcing of the wood(most commonly teak, iroko or nyatoh), but these are rarely substantiated by independent certification which can show the history of the furniture from forest to shop floor.

• Of the 34 leading furniture suppliers asked 74% made green claims but only 21%had credible certified products carrying the FSC logo amongst their products.
• The most common claimed sources include Indonesia, Ghana, Burma, Malaysia and Vietnam. But these countries are known to suffer from rampant deforestation or massive corruption within the timber industry. Some countries act as bases forproducts illegally logged elsewhere (eg Cambodia and Laos). In Vietnam, Laos Cambodia and Burma the timber industry has close ties to the military.
• While many suppliers claim their products are legally sourced, even if this is the case, they were not able to show the source meets high social and environmental standards.

Matt Phillips, Forest Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said:

“Hardwood should carry a Government health warning because buying it in the UK threatens the well being of people in the developing World and the World's last remaining tracts of tropical forest. We urge the public to avoid hardwood and to demand that retailers and suppliers stop the misleading greenwash they use to sell timber products. They should only sell wood that has been independently certified to come from forests with the highest social and environmental standards - that means choosing the FSC label.”

If you're a journalist looking for press information please contact the Friends of the Earth media team on 020 7566 1649.

Published by Friends of the Earth Trust