In 2020, the then president of Brazil said he would reveal which countries were the consumers of the illegally extracted wood from Amazonia. [0]
No further news were heard about it. There were even a startup that would use DNA to certify the origin of the wood, allowing traceability.
The "efforts to halt trade in illegal timber such as the EU Timber Regulation and the US Lacey Act" can greatly contribute to reduce this process: harvesting those trees isn't cheap, and without buyers paying large sums to aquire it, it becomes non-profitable.
Another side of this is you really want to put economic value on sustainably harvesting these trees and preserving the forest, because if you say "no harvesting at all" then it's more profitable for someone to burn the forest down and replace it with cattle.
Years ago tracking lumber from harvesting through the supply chain was one of the few convincing cases I heard for blockchain applications, where you have a sequence of people who don't trust each other and buyers want verification that the group cutting the trees was really only cutting and selling the amount they were allowed to. Haven't heard any more on that recently.
EDIT - took a look for updates and I see the FSC has a "FSC Blockchain Beta pilot program"
The problem is that in many cases tropical hardwoods are so slow growing and so intertwined with other species (both physically and metaphorically) that there isn't a way to harvest them sustainably. As a planet, we need to decide how much of these forests we are going to save, and then actually protect them. That may sound idealistic, but as someone who has spent a significant portion of my adult life working and studying tropical rainforests, I don't see another good option.
Certainly not in the volume for people to be using it for all their decks and flooring. Actual sustainable harvesting would probably price out everything but musical instruments and maybe some expensive outdoor furniture.
Take the area of land we're willing to give over to lumber farming, divide by how long it takes to grow a tree to harvest and that's how much lumber demand can be met. Adjust price to make demand meet that limit.
> Take the area of land we're willing to give over to lumber farming, divide by how long it takes to grow a tree to harvest and that's how much lumber demand can be met. Adjust price to make demand meet that limit.
It's not quite that easy. Soil under plantations is easy to deplete at a non-renewable rate. Harvest causes soil compaction and erosion. Post-harvest, herbicides are used extensively to kill weeds that would otherwise fill the void before replacement trees are mature enough to keep weeds out. Is the herbicide being used at a renewable rate? etc etc
Finding better trees to farm might help. It might be easier to get people to choose something other than cutting down old growth forests if the alternative wasn't white pine.
The argument of “we must hunt/log it to save it” is a smokescreen deployed as part of a false dichotomy by crass and cynical individuals who wish to profit. Your solution is the right solution: protection policy. Not the invisible hand of the market economics like some bandy about.
It's also a good spot to try out the "free-market ecology"[1] economic system, where all resources extracted from the earth are included in a receipt to the end user of the product.
Recently I was watching Property Brothers and saw two episodes where both houses had Brazilian Hardwood flooring. The funny thing is that I live in Brazil and it is quite rare to find houses with that type of flooring - the bureaucracy and costs associated make it very expensive - but that might not be the case if the customer is Canadian
> The funny thing is that I live in Brazil and it is quite rare to find houses with that type of flooring
Does Brazilian Hardwood flooring actually mean the type of flooring Brazilians have or just simply that the hardwood being used as flooring is from Brazil?
I would argue there is zero point in using real hardwood on floors these days given vinyl planks are way cheaper, way more durable, and look nearly indistinguishable from real thing.
Hardwood floors can be re-sanded and refinished many times over, generating no waste. Vinyl floors get scratched and then thrown away. Wood is renewable, vinyl comes from oil wells. I'm not certain this is actually logical.
We may be an anomaly, but we have 13.5mm laminates[1] which I'd say were relatively high grade when we put them in. The product we used didn't come with stair kits so we had to do the staircase with oak stained to match. We have two full-size golden retrievers. Eight years later, the laminates look like the day we installed them -- literally. The oak is all scratched up and will take a lot of work to refinish. [2] I was apprehensive about the laminates, and I'm definitely no Captain Planet, but I'll never have anything else. *edited to add imgur link.
Laminates are closer to hardwood flooring than to vinyl. Put it in simplest terms, they are basically the same as hardwood flooring, but you can only sand and refinish them maybe once or twice. This limits their lifespan, from 100+ years of full hardwood flooring to “only” a 30-40 years for laminate.
Vinyl, on the other hand, is completely different, and is unlikely to survive daily use in serviceable state for more than 20 years, typically even less than that.
I think you're confusing terminology here. Laminate is generally the cheapest option with some sort of plastic over some sort of MDF type material. Definitely no option to refinish.
You're describing engineered hardwood, which ironically often cost more than regular hardwood.
I think you're right laminates probably cannot be refinished. But they are definitely much more expensive/premium than vinyl. I think we paid ~$3.50/square foot just in material cost. I think it's a kind of pressed fiberboard on top of a plastic core and a rubber'ish bottom.
There are expensive and cheap versions of both varieties.
Vinyl luxury plank can be very nice, durable, flexible, thin but with backing to make it quiet and gives it a good feel to walk on, waterproof etc.
I installed much myself and choose based on quality not price and went with VLP for our needs. I think it really just comes down to where you are installing and its characteristics and what materials you have around you.
Also laminates can’t be refinished, nor vinyl. There are some interesting bamboo options out there but frankly VLP these days doesn’t gas off tons of toxic fumes for years, lasts long enough, and is cheap and easy to install and looks real enough these days you’d have to really study it to notice a pattern that unless you really need real it’s good nuff.
I'm curious -- are there laminates that wear naturally? Looking at the photos in your second link, I think the laminates would look more natural and less overtly plastic if they did show a little wear similar to the oak.
Living with the laminates, I wouldn't say they look overtly plastic. Hardwoods are definitely shiny too. You can see a very similar grain in the second photo with the oak. You're right that some wear might change the finish, but I would definitely not trade for the wear you see on the oak. My wife's parents have high-end oak hardwoods and full size dogs. Their flooring is a mess.
The biggest problem with laminate flooring is not the wear, it's that if they get wet the compressed fiberboard absorbs the water and swells, and the surface warps, and the only repair is to replace. Some laminates are 100% waterproof for locations like bathrooms but many are not.
Something like a spilled glass of water or puddle from wet shoes, if not noticed immediately and wiped up, can permanently ruin the floor.
Yes, we were a little apprehensive about putting them in our three bathrooms. You pay more for better moisture resistance. Eight years later and ours still look like new, notwithstanding our kids getting out of showers multiple times a day. At least the flooring we got seem to handle water very well.
That's pretty hard to do on modern vinyl floors. Vinyl gets a bad rap because there were a lot of low end bad products, now there are some amazingly durable options.
Have you ever redone flooring? Because there's definitely waste when hardwood floors are refinished. Arguably equal to replacing a segment of PVC flooring.
But... The amount reflooring we do, it's not even a concern. Even if PVC comes from oil - flooring has years of service and isn't burned for fuel. It's what we call "durable goods". Quality PVC flooring doesn't scratch easily and doesn't require polyurethane refinishing.
Reducing animal sourced food consumption would have a bigger impact, than abstaining from PVC floor planks.
Having worked on and lived with both, I'd rather cut out a section of parquet and replace it than refinish a hardwood floor. IMHO the problem with hardwood is that it takes regular maintenance that nobody really wants to do. The luminous floors in old buildings look that way because they've been oiled and buffed by people on their hands and knees for a hundred years.
I'm saying that PVC or laminate flooring(much more common) is absolutely not a concern for climate change. "They come from oil" is an illogical argument for durable goods.
In addition - when you cut a part of the hardwood flooring, your new piece will not look the same without a lot of work. Specially for hardwood flooring that is more than a few decades old.
Depends really, some people are fussy about the removal of shoes in the home in the UK and some aren't.
I'm sure you can guess by the way I say it which end I'm at.
I wear shoes around my house because if I don't, as a home-worker, I don't wear shoes very often, and then my feet and ankles start to get painful. I try to segregate indoor and outdoor shoes, but am not very successful at this, and have yet to find slippers which are supportive enough.
That's not correct. While many people choose polyurethane finished wood since it is less likely to stain from liquids, oils and varnishes are popular as well.
Polyurethane is one type of varnish so if you're going to contrast it you'll have to be more specific (phenolic resin or alkyd resin)
Usually oils would be combined with some other varnish, especially on a floor, because they offer nearly zero abrasion or water resistance. You'd think oil finishes like boiled linseed oil or tung oil would offer some water protection because of the oil but they don't. Better than wax or nothing but much worse than varnishes.
This is a table from a book on my shelf by Bob Flexner on the subject, Understanding Wood Finishes. It's a good reference
https://imgur.com/a/TzacsLs
Hardwax oils are also used but oftentimes have quite bad VOCs. However, I’m familiar with at least one manufacturer that has low/no VOC oils which certainly shows it’s possible but perhaps there’s a good technical explanation for why VOCs are so common in these oil treatments.
I've not used any hard wax oil finish. I'm surprised reading this [1] though that it offers "Great wear-, water- and heat resistance". But I guess that's from the company also claiming that Monocoat only takes one coat. But, what I'm understanding from that link is also that maybe the curing accelerators have VOCs so maybe the hard wax oils without accelerators don't have the VOC content (?)
What I was looking at was a different manufacturer’s product which talks about how they use vegetable oil which seems intriguing. I’m going to use the espresso wax / stain and see how it turns out with different numbers of coats https://www.interbuild.shop/route/product/product?product_id...
The vegetable oil stood out to me too. That Bob Flexner book emphasizes that oils other than tung and BLO don't cure but instead go rancid which is why they're not used. (Which is also why BLO is boiled because straight linseed oil doesn't cure) I wonder what that process of heating the vegetable oil with the wax does that just heating vegetable oil alone doesn't?
As a side note, I like the low VOC aspect. I've used pure tung oil from Woodcraft before and it doesn't have a strong smell but it give me the absolute worst headache I've ever had. Worse than any exposure to a varnish or paste wax or something I know has VOCs in it.
Good luck with that product, it looks very interesting!
You're right if we're not accounting for time, energy, work, money, and being displaced while they're refinishing said floor in your waste assessment. My last house had real wood floors, you can't be there when it's happening, even water based lacquers have toxic fumes and particulates.
Vinyl is cheaper, stronger, less prone to scratches than wood, more water resistant, and requires minimum maintenance and upkeep cost. Vinyl is also recyclable...
Ceramic flooring is so much colder than a real wood floor to me. I have no numerical data to offer as evidence to how it feels to me. However, walking into a house that has solid tile flooring vs a house with real wood flooring has a night/day difference in feel. I'm not necessarily just talking about F°/C° "colder". It's just a lot less "feels like home" with tile flooring.
Yes you need to have floor heating. Here in the netherlands pretty standard in new houses. The tiles can look really like wood. Its expensive though and not easy to replace. No floor heating would be too cold indeed.
Like I mentioned, I was using the term "colder" much less in the sense of temperature/heat, but more in the sense of less inviting. Tile floors do not feel cozy. There's a sense of harshness. They are also much more active acoustically as well. Yes, I know furniture and rugs will mitigate some of that, but it's just not something that feels inviting. It's great for a bathroom or kitchen, but for living spaces and bedrooms, it's just not the right feel, to me.
maybe I'm top 1% neurotic about these things but I can tell from Zillow images alone. And definitely by feel of walking on them and the distinct noise they make. There's no comparison.
I seriously doubt they are indistinguishable for most people, but I could be very wrong, especially since so many people go for them.
Yes. There is no way the extra costs of real hardwood are worth the supposed benefits, to me. LVP or LVT or whatever vinyl name is just so much cheaper and easier to work with, and as long as the floor is clean and presentable, the only difference I see is wood flooring being more expensive.
Have you ever lived in a house with real wood floors? The difference you feel barefoot is quite noticeable. It may not be worth the cost to you, but it is definitely different.
Sometimes life is better when you just accept that something is different but not necessarily worse.
Natural gas fireplaces aren't real wood-burning, and I can tell, but I just appreciate that they are way cleaner.
Now, furniture is a different story. Wood is much better than the engineered crap. Try lifting a modern piece that looks like wood and maybe has a thin layer of wood (very heavy and easy to damage) and then try lifting something made of real wood (light and strong).
But it's so much worse, we can squabble over particulars the minor day to day benefits of them both but the showstopper is that laminate is just trash waiting to happen. Hardwood floors can last 100+ years easy and can be maintained essentially indefinitely. And even if you don't maintain them they can be restored without too much trouble, there are previously abandoned houses that got flipped and are going for 600k with the original floors.
Hardwood floors, tile roofs, ceramic freestanding bathtubs, and loose stone or brick pathways are never not worth the investment.
We went with a mid-grade LVP in the basement (ease of install, cost, and water-resistance). It's fine in that use case, but it has some drawbacks over wood. The primary one I've noticed is the damage pattern (from moving furniture, etc) isn't good - wood patinas better, where LVP just gets gouges. Maybe there are more expensive LVP options that don't do this.
The engineered flooring is generally superior technology:
1. It requires less hardwood (rare) for the veneer, and uses softwood (plentiful) for the plywood base.
2. It can be milled exactly to one thickness. Generally with solid hardwood floors you need to sand after installing to get everything into one plane due to moisture movement in the hardwood warping and twisting it.
3. It can be applied in wider planks. Wide solid hardwood floors tend to cup and contract and leave gaps after installation. The plywood base in engineered planks is cross laminated so that it is more stable and resist moisture changes
Good engineered hardwood has enough of a top wear layer that allows the same number of refinishes as solid hardwood (due to hitting the tongue and groove), plus you get better humidity performance.
There are very reasonable hardwood materials available - it's just better to prefer sourcing them from countries without illegal exploitation issues. Canadian hardwood is pretty affordable and quite durable for flooring - as an alternative.
"the then president of Brazil said he would reveal which countries were the consumers of the illegally extracted wood from Amazonia."
Could one of those countries be China? In Madagascar a decade ago, the felling of hardwood trees (even in supposedly protected national parks) was said to be largely driven by the Chinese furniture industry, and often when I passed a logging operation while cycling, there were Chinese overseeing the work. Considering Brazil–China trade links, no surprise if the then-president didn’t want to rock that boat.
Black locust is basically as good as ipe--competitive in characteristics like hardness and rot resistance, and I think slighly lower in price. It has been used for years for fence posts and now a lumber industry for it seems to be maturing. Apparently it grows like a weed and is even considered invasive in some places.
I used black locust for a large porch and am very pleased with it.
I did an enormous amount of research when replacing my deck this summer and BL was top of my list. My experience trying to source it here in Eastern PA was, to put it mildly, off-putting, as everyone I spoke to wanted to, unprompted, spend the first 30 minutes of the conversation telling me how shady their competitors were, especially when it came to claims of domestic sourcing.
I ended up doing a kind of 180 and installing Accoya wood, which, geographically and species-wise is about the furthest thing from BL available, but felt to me like a good investment in longevity and thus embodied carbon, even when accounting for the long boat trip(s) to my place.
It’s absolutely gorgeous and very very expensive. Unlike the other comment I absolutely can tell the difference between synthetic and natural woods and in general while I don’t have a blanket issue with man-made materials, I do have an issue with ersatz anything, almost to the degree of having an allergy. For that reason I was boxed into real woods, and from a sustainability (and toxicity) and performance perspective, I didn’t find a ton of options beyond black locust or thermally modified or acetylated woods. Accoya was everything I wanted except cheap, and it is clearly real wood, which, sadly, seems luxurious today.
Just installed it so can’t speak to longevity but encouraged by the 50 year warranty against structural issues caused by fungal decay or rot, or against swell or shrinkage > 2.5%.
Sounds like a good quality lumber. Do you happen to know the price you paid for it? Last I got a quote was before the pandemic but it was around $6 to $7 per boardfoot which at the time was very comparable to hard maple.
I should also mention that it doesn’t get hot at all, even in very hot summer full-sun conditions. Very nice to walk on barefoot - it feels very soft to the touch.
I'm not sure about black locust rot resistance. That's pretty heavily informed on when you harvest it. If you harvest in the spring, it won't last five years. It's only good if harvested in the dead of winter when there is no sap.
Also, it doesn't grow large, often because it's so susceptible to disease. So there's that, too.
Wikipedia says "It is very resistant to rot" and "In the Netherlands some other parts of Europe, black locust is one of the most rot-resistant local trees".
I mean, that's fine, but only harvesting for a short portion of the year (during hard freeze after sap is out) severely limits the market and therefore increases cost.
The bottleneck is growing the wood, not cutting it. Modern forestry equipment is insanely fast.
Most agricultural crops have a very short seasonal window in which they can be harvested, but corn is not expensive because we only get one harvest per year, lumber is an anomaly in that respect.
I use Black Locust despite being illegal here for its invasive species. There is no record of it in the original survey of trees and that is how it got the invasive label.
The longer, clearer, and straighter you need tbe wood the worse black locusts becomes.
Osage Orange is another interesting domestic species that is extremely strong and also resistant to rot. I use it as a contrast wood for projects where I don't mind the colour change from bright orange to black over time. Things like small inlays but especially as pegs for draw bored mortise and tenon joints. A quick online check reveals it is sold in sizes probably useful for building decks.
It is notoriously difficult to dry Osage orange without cracking. If you can get a solid piece it’s extremely durable. Pretty good mechanical properties too. Handles that go for days.
The amusing thing about Osage is we lived in a subdivision that contained the old boundary of a farm, so all of our neighbors had a row of “problem” Osage orange on their back property line. 18” or bigger, tall and looming. And now I know people who actually want it.
I’ve never heard of Black Locust and I don’t recall it being an option when I built a deck a few years back (perhaps it was though!) but reading about it I wish I had. I ended up just using pressure treated pine (the exotics were 10’s of thousands more) but when it’s time to rebuild I’ll certainly consider Black locust. Apparently it takes stain well too.
We have had that plastic wood down for 5 years and it is perfect. 2 years ago I extended a small bit of decking and used real wood as it isn't that visible and was so much cheaper. Already two years after it looks terrible and I'll be amazed if it lasts 5 years. Sadly plastic wood is brilliant. I can see it outlasting the frame it is built on.
You need to seal and stain the wood. Depending on the brand that could mean every year or every 2 or 3 years. The wood will rot otherwise. But maintained then pressure treated pine (or outdoor hardwood) will last a long time.
You’ve also pointed out the problem with plastic. It fades and if you were to add new plastic it would look off.
I don’t know about the fading. My in laws have a dock built out of it, and aside from it getting hot in the sun, the color is still pretty consistent between shaded and non-shaded sections.
Will it? I'm not aware of any plastics that are insanely durable, they just don't rot. But treated wood also doesn't rot. I'd expect a lot of weathering and surface degradation at a similar rate to typical woods.
That is a pretty broad statement so perhaps you're thinking of a different thing than me when you say "treated wood", but the typical pressure treated pine you get at big box home improvement stores will absolutely rot. They reformulated the treating agent in 2004 so it's no longer using arsenic, and since then pressure treated wood just doesn't last as long. Generally in my area, fences and decks built with standard pressure treated pine look good for about 6 months, then look bad for 5 years, then start to fall apart.
Is your wood unstained? If you stain or paint it, wood should be lasting longer than 5 years. I think my mom rebuilt her wooden deck after about 10 years at least.
I don't know what this plastic wood is tbh, but I'm having a hard time imagining any plastic surface looking good after 5 years of rain, sun, and boots. Maybe if you sand it down annually. I'm not a fan of grinding microplastics into my yard.
It's basically combining wood fibres with a plastic resin (instead of lignin as in natural wood), then manufactured with some kind of molding or extrusion process.
My big concern is UV stabilization. Plastic can be stabilized but how can i be sure the product i buy is actually UV stabilized? I don't want a deck that may turn to powder because the manufacturer skipped a step of the process.
They have serious issues with mold and mildew as well. They also get rather hot.
They’re fine for certain people I guess but I don’t like how they look. And if you ever have to replace a part it will look weird as the deck will be faded except the new part.
I don't know the real practical importance of this, but this [1] Wikipedia page states that the Janka hardness of Black Locust is much less than half that of Ipe.
This clonal tree is a menace, and should definitely be harvested for use. The amount of scars I have from their INSANE thorns when young is getting too much to count.
Another interesting option is Accoya lumber. It is acetylated softwood performs as well as traditional hardwoods in exterior applications. It looks nice too.
> [as a consumer, ask] Where exactly does the wood come from? Is there documentation of the origin of the wood and its path through the production chain?
Realistically no-one will tell you that the thing you want to buy is illegally harvested wood. Most sales people won't know, won't understand the question to begin with, and won't care enough to provide the information. And if they do know, incentives go against being honest and transparent. So I doubt this is very useful
> Realistically no-one will tell you that the thing you want to buy is illegally harvested wood.
They might tell you if it has been harvested legally though, as that is often a selling point. And if they don't know and can't find out then you could move on to a different supplier.
In which case they'd be lying and selling you something under false pretences. Obviously it can happen, but it's a risky thing and something a lot of businesses would want to avoid.
It becomes useful if a big enough percentage of potential customers ask this question and if an insufficient answer is given decide to shop elsewhere (at a place that can provide a sufficient answer).
In my (albeit limited) experience, if you can’t get some sort of provenance documentation for exotic hardwoods from the lumberyard, it’s almost guaranteed to be unsustainably harvested, mostly outright illegally. Unfortunately it seems that most lumberyards open to the public and contractors are full of such wood because the legit stuff is even more expensive and sold mostly to high end furniture manufacturers and specialty suppliers.
Brazil is going to go through the same process as Cuba did with mahogany until trade in ipê is banned entirely, except it’s not an island so it’ll be impossible to enforce.
It's OT, and not meant to detract from your point or be pedantic in any way, just something I've seen and heard in software, too:
> providence
when what I am sure you meant to say was "provenance". I've heard people talk and ask about the "providence of the data" too much not to leave a comment, I guess! It's not manna from heaven it's just some rows in a database somewhere ;)
Documentations are easy to buy in many countries where those exotic woods are sourced. Most of the traffic are done by people in the government or by those who put them there.
> In my (albeit limited) experience, if you can’t get some sort of provenance documentation for exotic hardwoods from the lumberyard, it’s almost guaranteed to be unsustainably harvested, mostly outright illegally.
If you can't get any provenance documentation, how are you assuming it's harvested illegally?
Funnily enough, a lot of the illegally harvested wood comes with great provenance information, if not official documentation. Unscrupulous manufacturers need to know where to reliably source it and corruption where these trees are harvested is rampant so they don't even need to hide it. I assume so because there's a significant price difference between those operations and legitimate sustainable ones when provenance is available.
However I think the exotic wood that makes it to the average lumberyard comes almost exclusively from opportunistic small logging operations that stumble upon on groves of trees and cut them down and ship them out as fast as possible, oftentimes under the noses of the land owners (the state, natural reserves, etc.).
> not an island so it’ll be impossible to enforce.
Unlike drugs, wood is a bulky cargo.
Sure, you might smuggle a few planks, but you aren't going to manage to smuggle tens of thousands of trucks full unless the government is deliberately turning a blind eye.
I’ve never seen a lumberyard that doesn’t have sustainability certifications.
Anyway, much of the illegal harvesting is due to Brazil’s right wing government actively encouraging people to burn the amazon to the ground.
Though it would be hypocritical, we should treat that as an act of war. The greenhouse effect of that one action is going to cause trillions of damage to coastal cities alone.
Unless it is a piano keyboard, because musicians are aware of this and so the only pianos with ivory keyboards have ivory from nearly 100 years ago. There would be interest in new ivory by a few (generally because they have an antique piano with one broken key), but they will demand proof that the ivory was sustainably harvested (There was a park a few years back overcrowd with elephants that was looking into providing such certification, though last I've heard they haven't figured out how to do this)
The technician that works on our piano reglued some
of the ivory. He said that, in the worst case, he could give us a replacement, since he has a pile of antique ivory he got from the keys of ruined/rebuilt pianos.
If we ever fully restore the keys, we’d opt for not-ivory.
Every pre-WW2 piano I've seen was crooked beyond repair and untunable. I bet there are far more donor instruments than functioning ones, considering that a lot can happen in 70 years.
There are, but not all ivory looks alike so finding a match is hard. Which is why someone who wants to restore an antique piano to new would be interested in new ivory if a sustainable source is available.
>but they will demand proof that the ivory was sustainably harvested
yes, i'm sure this is true for 100% of people buying fancy pianos, and "proof of sustainable harvest" isn't at all a loophole that gets used to sustain an illegal ivory trade.
The music industry is very good about this. Which is actually easy because there is no current source of sustainable harvest ivory. (and when there was a source it was in such limited quantities that no major manufacture would bother)
By "exclusive" is apparently meant high-priced. Those of us who are excluded, or object to becoming complicit in denuding forests, will build our decks out of pressure-treated pine and Trex.
I hated these options as well and thus did a bunch of research into thermally-modified and acetylated timber. I'd recommend investigating those options if you don't want plastic or PT.
This reminds me of "we only harvest X ebony trees" nonsense when what they mean is "we only _buy_ X amount of ebony, and we pay more for pure black, so people cut down many trees to find the relatively rare pure black ones"
This has been an area of interest among musicians. I don't know how much of demand we account for. At this point it is widely accepted that ebony doesn't have to be jet black. The fingerboard of my double bass is a beautiful piece of ebony that is basically dark brown. I'm perfectly happy with it.
I got confused about the name "ipê" (first time I hear it, my Portuguese is basic at most), it's also known as "lapacho" in Argentina, "tajy" in Paraguay and "araguaney" in Venezuela.
Same, in the picture from the article I clearly identified a Tajy Sa'yju. Fun thing is that this wood is used for absolutely everything in Paraguay. From posts to delimit rural properties to fuel for barbecues.
"You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird [...]".
The species commercially traded as Ipe (Handroanthus spp., Roseodendron spp. and Tabebuia spp.) were submitted by Columbia and Panama last year for inclusion in CITES Appendix II. This submission was accepted, meaning that the international trade in these woods will be subject to strict controls as of 25 November 2024. Any international trade must be accompanied by an export permit issued by a national Management Authority, certifying that the wood was harvested in a manner that is compatible with the long-term survival of the species.
CITES enforcement is no joke and the listing of Ipe in Appendix II is likely to hugely reduce demand, due to the substantial bureaucratic burden and legal risk that importers will be exposed to. Guitarists will be all too familiar with the impact of CITES, following the listing of Rosewood in Appendix II in 2017. Until an exemption for musical instruments was negotiated in 2019, guitars with rosewood fingerboards practically disappeared from the market - the risks for importers and distributors were simply too great to reasonably manage.
As botanical footnote: All this trees called lapachos are in the Bignoniaceae family. Lapachos have huge ornamental value and hold the equivalent place as the cherry trees in the northern hemisphere. They are cultured in all the big cities that have the correct climate; by their fantastic bloom in bright yellow, pink or pure white and their role as a cultural symbol.
This means that some lapacho wood can have legal origins also
This is why I stick to locally grown native species of wood. My favorite is Red Oak but Black Walnut is a close second. Both are amazing woods with excellent qualities. Best way to make sure you aren't funding organizations that are killing people and destroying forests.
Apparently it's exclusive hardwood for exclusive decks and the demand for this exclusive tropical wood is increasing. This article really likes the word exclusive.
I think I've seen it done locally, in the USA... "Forest Preserves" cutting down old growth maple/oaks, and piling the massive logs in parking lots until hauled away... I think I've also seen significant "over-pruning" for the sake of the construction of various pathways and "theme parks" for humans.
There are a number of diseases that oaks are susceptible to. In our area, oak wilt is becoming problematic, and as the tree weakens, it becomes host to a variety of beetles whose grub larvae tunnel right into the trunk.
Pulling down sick trees is sometimes the best thing you can do to help the rest.
Could be. I saw more than 30+ massive logs and healthy piths in a back lot of the woods; stacked carefully before being removed; maple and oak. Given the level of local corruption, this forest management deserves the suspicion.
The city and the locality was recently accused of cutting down too many trees for numerous reasons/projects. Unless you are adamant, they are quite aggressive about killing things in parkways.
I think it would be better to leave things where they are in "Forest Preserves"... Maybe one day we'll have [unmanaged] old growth forests again.
If you walk through many of the mountains in the bay area, where redwoods dominate, you will notice a sad fact.
After the earthquake in 1906 san francisco basically burned down. And that led to all the redwoods on all the bay area mountains being clear cut for wood and lime.
In Henry Cowell state park (and others) you'll find some trees that survived.
One that was cut down is shown in a cross section with the rings marked.
Some rings are marked:
- 1 Birth of Jesus/Modern Calendar Begins
- 105 Chinese Invented Paper
The redwoods you see now are still giants, hundreds of feet tall. But notice they are clustered in groups around a stump or an empty area where an old-grown redwood used to stand.
I'd like to see the research, because I believe there isn't any way to sell ipê wood legally in Brazil. I'm almost certain the real number is higher than the 96%, not the one on the title.
Turns out there is a way, used mostly since the last decade. And their methodology seems best-fitting, and not a conservative estimation. I'm very positively surprised that 1/4 of the ipê wood sold internationally is legal.
* IKEA faces allegations of aggressively exploiting the last of Romania's ancient forests.
* Ivestigations in the U.S. document IKEA's rush against time to exploit these forests.
* The primary motivation for this deforestation is sheer profit.
* Documented evidence shows complete and illegal clear-cutting of forests under IKEA's direction.
Romania's Forests – Europe's Amazon:
* Romania is home to one of the world's last and largest ancient forests.
The Carpathian Mountains in Romania house half of the remaining ancient forests, often termed as the "Amazon of Europe."
Economic Incentives and Unchecked Exploitation:
* Romania's entry into the European Union in 2007 opened markets for its abundant and cheap timber.
Political inefficiency and corruption have enabled unchecked deforestation and exploitation.
Reports suggest that more than half of Romania's timber is exploited illegally.
IKEA's Dubious Role:
* IKEA stands as the world's largest individual wood consumer, its demand growing by about 2 million trees annually.
* In 2015, IKEA began buying vast tracts of forests in Romania, quickly becoming the largest private forest owner there.
* IKEA has been linked to suppliers involved in illegal wood acquisitions, including notable names like Kronospan, Egger, and Schweighofer.
* The company has a pattern of aggressive forest acquisitions and connections with both legal and illegal suppliers, not only in Romania but also in countries like Ukraine and Russia.
LGBTQ+ Campaign as a Distraction:
* IKEA's promotion of LGBTQ+ rights is portrayed as a smokescreen to divert attention from its environmental and corporate malpractices.
* The promotion of LGBTQ+ ideologies, while noble in other contexts, is seen here as a corporate strategy to overshadow their illicit activities.
IKEA's Ideological Dominance:
* IKEA is not just a neutral space; it's portrayed as an ideological stronghold.
* There have been instances where employees were allegedly fired for not conforming to IKEA's political stance.
* A Polish court had to intervene to reinstate an employee terminated on such grounds.
A Moral and Environmental Dilemma:
* Romania faces a choice: to focus on rampant deforestation and exploitation by giants like IKEA or to be sidetracked by ideological debates while being economically and morally overshadowed by such corporations.
As a musician, this saddens me, because the Carpathian mountains may be the last source of really good wood for string instruments. New growth wood might not be a substitute because global warming and modern breeding are speeding up growth, and narrow growth rings are preferred.
Progress is being made on synthetic materials. My cello and bass bows are all carbon fiber. Carbon fiber instruments are gradually improving.
Are you sure? If you mean that most hardwood in the US was "managed" at some point as a woodlot, then I guess it might be true, but if you mean that most hardwood in the US was specifically planted to be harvested, I'm very doubtful.
I'm far from an expert, but I am in the process of planning our hardwood harvest in Vermont. The northeastern US produces a lot of hardwood and my impression is that very little of it is "farmed".
Can you point to sources? My attempt at searching didn't produce much either way. If you are right, I'd love to update my false impression. Or are you possibly confusing "hardwood" with "softwood", such as pine?
I've seen a good deal of wood at USA's Home Depots that isn't grown in the USA.
Last time I bought some pine lumber for a project at Home Depot there was a bunch from New Zealand and a bunch from USA, the stuff from New Zealand was cut to much better precision.
To be spending a lot of time working in the rainforest in Peru where logging (legal and illegal) is everywhere, you can't trace properly. Certificates are easy to forge, the entire pipeline is pen and paper. How can you tell once the legal wood and the illegal wood are in a container which is which? You can't.
So many people here are outraged, how many of you are supporting on the ground teams protecting rainforests?
If you care, do your research, support causes like https://www.junglekeepers.org (disclaimer here; that is the one I know, work for and support) and don't use exotic woods.
I'm always torn between building things out of wood vs. other materials.
I hate cutting down trees. But at the same time wood seems like a way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere into things that will last a very, very long time. It seems like I could build carbon-negative furniture out of wood, as opposed to carbon-positive furniture out of other materials. As long as those trees are re-planted. I want assurance that when I buy lumber it's regenerative.
If you buy pine or oak or cedar you can be pretty darn sure it is regenerative. That's how the industry is able to exist: they cut the same fields of trees every 15-30 years.
If you're concerned, you can always plant a tree or two somewhere for every project you do that uses wood. There are lots of places that let you plant trees even outside your own property.
I wonder if there's a way to tag trees to stop this. Like, spray the protected wood with some harmless-but-detectable dose of a radioisotope so you can tell which wood is which.
Or if there’s a way to ruin the wood for woodworking without killing the tree itself. It seems like you would need to do something really clever. Inject it with capsaicin?
Tree spiking is one example of this. It's so common as to be illegal in the United States [1]. Unfortunately, without strict worker protections, it's conceivable that workers would be the ones to pay for their employers' (or their upstream suppliers') illegal actions.
Eh, with one confirmed injury, I'm comfortable calling it "conceivable". The testimony of the injured worker in that case even reflects the fact that a spiked tree does not guarantee injury or death to the operator -- indeed, first there seems to be substantial damage to the machinery, and only then, a risk to the operator [1]:
> Alexander later filed a lawsuit against Louisiana-Pacific claiming that the band saw had been weakened from previous strikes with nails, but that he was forced to work with the saw or face dismissal.
Not a bad idea! There would have to be a system for determining lumber that was previously illegal to cut but has since become legal. Maturity of the tree or land ownership changed, etc.
I’m really confused by this new trend of people being super aggressive about things that won’t matter at all. Why not spend the energy somewhere it might make a difference?
Unwillingness to do this arbitrary action you've chosen isn't unwillingness to do anything positive.
As for complaining, you started it. (Unless you're claiming the article itself is useless complaining when they could do something to help the problem, but "plant a tree" is not something that could help this problem.)
I don't understand why people are downvoting advice to plant trees. Are there so many anti-tree people out there? I'll bet they use toilet paper...but maybe not. All that paper and wood has to come from somewhere. Replace and replenish.
As the OP says, the Amazon is a unique ecosystem. It's an old-growth rainforest. Planting trees only creates new-growth forests that, while nice, are ecologically very different.
No further news were heard about it. There were even a startup that would use DNA to certify the origin of the wood, allowing traceability.
The "efforts to halt trade in illegal timber such as the EU Timber Regulation and the US Lacey Act" can greatly contribute to reduce this process: harvesting those trees isn't cheap, and without buyers paying large sums to aquire it, it becomes non-profitable.
[0] in Portuguese: https://exame.com/brasil/bolsonaro-diz-que-revelara-paises-q...