Should we stop buying hardwoods ?

[Guest]

I heard a radio report the other day about environmentalists staging a demonstration because of ‘No 10’ using hardwoods for renovation.

I think many of us feel guilty about buying hardwoods for our boats but continue to do it because there are no other alternatives - or are there? Have we been conditioned over the years that because wood is traditional so it must be good ?

Flicking through a few environmental sites it soon becomes apparent that companies are still specifying rainforest wood and apart from the non-renewable aspect, ‘Mahogany is Murder’ and ‘Teak is Torture’ campaigns abound because of the means of harvesting it.

So what do we do ?

 

[tyger]

The problem is that just stopping buying hardwoods will not stop deforestation.

This extract from an e-mail I received recently gives an example of the scope of the problem.

<<The Brazilian congress is now voting on a project that will reduce the
Amazon forest to 50% of it size.... The area to be
deforested is 4 times the size of Portugal, and would be mainly used for
agriculture and pastures for livestock. All the wood is to be sold to
international markets in the form of wood chips by large multinational
companies.

The truth is that the soil in the Amazon forest is useless
without the forest itself, its quality is very acidic, and the region is
prone to constant floods. At the moment, more than 160,000 square
kilometres deforested with the same purpose are abandoned and in the process of
becoming deserts. Deforestation (and the subsequent processing of the wood
chips) on this scale will also release huge amounts of carbon (which is
currently locked up in the wood) back into the atmosphere.>>

Tropical hardwoods are very visable and emotive products: however buying hamburgers and fax paper (typical products from the scheme above) might have an even larger impact on the environment.

Teak gets some of the worst publicity - on another forum Iroko was described as a more PC correct hardwood- however because of its high price it is one wood that has a faint hope of becoming truely sustainable. Indonesia is growing teak in plantations with the aim of making it a sustainable product. As far as I know it is now the only country from which it is legal to export teak. A sucessfull boycott of teak might result in a similar situation to that described above.

For other hadwoods the problem is often not the felling of the wood but the way it is felled. Heavy machinery is used to "grub-up" the tree and drag it out of the forest. In the process many other trees, of no value as timber, are destroyed and the land turned to desert. Anyone who has travelled in SE Asia will have seen the results.

What is needed is an approach that is viable in the long term while giving short term economic and political benefits. There are initiatives to exploit tropical forests in a sustainable way: harvesting products such as rattan, bee's wax and nuts. Such schemes may also include limited logging using traditional methods of felling and extraction that are not so harmful to the forest.

So in response to your question I suggest that what we can do is support these initiatives. Be aware of where products come from and pressure your suppliers to ensure that they can trace the source of supply back to sustainable sources. Be prepared to pay a premium price for these products.

Alternatively you can go for an all plastic boat made with oil extracted from Alaska...
"White House Ties Oil Cutoff by Iraq to Drilling in Alaska" NY Times April-12.

 

[Guest]

Great response Tyger. Unfortunately it is not only the 'Third world' economies that are guilty of this. It is easy to point fingers at Asia and Sth America as it is easy to forget that in places like here in OZ and USA the forests are already demolished.

We have bugger all left, as the forests were pillaged in the past. Mind you it is still going on, there are protests going on allover OZ to stop further degradation of what little forests are left and we CAN afford to stop it immediately. In Tasmania there are tens of thousands of acres of original rainforests still under threat from woodchipping and anyone objecting to it is harassed as a greenie whale lover that has NO consideration for jobs.

It has even been brought up in parliament hat we start allowing oil exploration on the Barrier Reef for gods sake, how stupid is that???????

Anyway back to boats, fibreglass, steel, aluminium and wood are all environmentally damaging to some extent but that's the price the environment pays for us to have our toys. In the end we will pay environmentally for it but that's part of evolution I guess.

More beer.......(Is beer a threat to the environment?)

 

[tyger]

I agree, I was not blaiming the third world per se - it just so happens that they are the only people left with extensive forests of hardwood.

Britain was the first offender in modern times. Only a few hundred years ago England was virtualy covered in forest. Now less than 4% of England is woodland or forest. It is hypocritical to tell these countries "don't do this" unless we can offer alternatives that help solve their economic and political problems.

 

[tyger]

Re: Another Answer

<<Have we been conditioned over the years that because wood is traditional so it must be good ?>>
I have been on stripped out racers that have little or no wood in their structure so a good boat (fit for its purpose) can be made without wood.

Wood has many advantages - in particular it has a look and feel that no other material can match. Properly managed it is a sustainable product. It is also recyclable.

As an alternative to buying new timber look for reclaimed timber (try the small ads in woodworking magazines). Alternatively use temperate hardwoods - oak for example. Or use softwood and epoxy...

 

[SNAPS]

beer is OK, it's biodegradeable!!!

JACKTAR

 

[Guest]

Which is exactly the argument for why we should scratch foreign debt to genuinely starving countries so they don't need to demolish more forests.

More beer. I should stop replying before getting too p%^sed or it will start to sound like rubbish.

 

[billmacfarlane]

I don't see a problem letting them demolish their forests , after all it's only doing what we did when we demolished the Sussex Weald to make the ships that brought Britain wealth by trading and making war. What the Third World should be made aware of is a better alternative that will ultimately create a more sustainable wealth than a single hit of money by demolishing a forest , which is of course sustainable forests. Incidentally beer might be environmentally friendly but what about the noxious gase expelled afterwards ?

 

[Forbsie]

My ex-Commodore used to be in the timber business and said that there is a vast amount of dead trees in rainforests that can be felled and shipped out of the area without damaging healthy growth. Obviously, because he was my commodore and because I was on my 2nd bottle of port, I believe him implicitly, but it does make sense if the loggers can get to it and get it out.

On the other hand, I was in Sarawak a couple of years ago and they had cleared vast areas of forest because it was going to be flooded by the Bakun Dam. This sort of development is far more damaging because it uproots the local population as well as the trees. I cannot tell you how ugly this de-forested area looks and how desperate the local tribes people are having to move from their longhouses and local communities into the towns and cities.

 

[AndrewB]

OK ... Its agreed then ....

We get to keep our tacky teak decks and the third world can feel grateful.

(Bunch of apologists, all).

 

[brian_neale]

beer and the environment...

Some time back, a politician in the UK got up on his hind legs and started bleating about all the carbon dioxide added to beer that then escaped into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. It was subsequently pointed out to him that the atmosphere was where this carbon dioxide was taken from in the first place.

I agree with some of the earlier comments. It is not the hardwood that we buy that is causing the problems. It is the wood that is wasted as a side effect of clearances for land that is effectively destroyed in the process.

 

[chippie]

Re:

The downside of your commodore's argument is that the forest floor detritus is an integral part of that forest's ecosystem. By removing such trees ,one part of the cycle is being removed. A huge part of a forest's residual fertility lies in rotting matter on the forest floor.
Having said that, I guess it is preferable to take those fallen trees rather than clear felling the lot.

As a timber merchant your commodore would only see the forest as a resource to be exploited. The change in mindset to see a forest as much more than that is in my opinion what we should strive for.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by chippie on Sat Apr 13 01:43:20 2002 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[johndf]

If you can get it, buy wood with the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) logo, as this will have been produced in a sustainable way. On the other hand, the teak furniture that is cluttering up garden centres nowadays is mostly from unsustainable sources - the claims on the labels are not usually independently verified. I don't think it is yet possible to get FSC teak, but the Indonesian plantations shouldbe coming into production of smallish size teak in the next few years. My new Jeanneau has a lot of teak, and I did feel guilty about it, but there is not much option without going for a much more expensive boat.

 

[numenius]

I often think that my grand kids (my daughter is only 4, so I'm a bit ahead of myself here) are actualy going to find it hard to BELIVE what we are doing right now (the classic of course is how inefficient the petrol/diesel engine is - they're going to just LOVE us for that one when the oil runs out!).

http://members.lycos.co.uk/boaty1965/index.htm

 

[ccscott49]

I have a wooden boat, built of teak and iroko, I will continue to use hardwoods to repair it. The amount of wood used in boatbuilding these days, is a tiny drop in the ocean to the amounts used for furniture, decoration of houses etc, especially in places like Japan and the US. Never mind the amounts burnt to make room for more beef cattle in south america to make even more bloody mcdonalds! The forests could easily sustain the amount of timber used for boats. Until there is a material I could use to repair my wooden boat, I will continue to use wood.

 

[ccscott49]

Re: OK ... Its agreed then ....

Andrew! Don't start again tee hee! How you doin'? My decks aren't tacky and I don't apologise for it!

 

[ccscott49]

Don't worry about oil running out, not in your grandchildrens lifetimes anyway, or there childrens, it will get more expensive, but run out, nah!