L ast year the greens seemed back to their gung-ho worst. Presumably having used a Die Hard movie as their training video, Greenpeace protestors boarded ships carrying Brazilian plywood to the UK and France. They took refuge in the rigging and pictures of their eviction by balaclava-clad gendarmes were splashed across the front pages.
No doubt Greenpeace will say its protests had the desired effect. Amaplac, the Brazilian plywood supplier, has looked into its timber sourcing and is now going for FSC-certification. Perhaps the publicity also helped the green group recruit more members, which a newspaper claimed it sorely needed.
But, while there may still be some environmentally unreconstructed firms out there, the bulk of the timber trade really doesn’t need beating over the head on green issues. For ecological and commercial reasons, it knows it has to use its precious resource responsibly and sustainably.
It has already made major strides along the certification route and now barely an edition goes by without a company telling TTJ it has secured some form of environmental accreditation.
This week comes the news that the UK’s Pan European Forestry Certification operation is a step closer to issuing eco-labels and that headway is being made towards a pan-African forest certification scheme.
In Brazil too, plywood producers are signing up to a new pledge on sustainable sourcing. These include Amaplac, which insists it was already making positive environmental moves before the protests.
Nobody is saying the industry is greener than green yet, but the key lesson from progress made to date is that the best way forward is for business, government and NGOs to talk.
Whether that’s sunk in with those activists who fancy themselves in an oily vest, wielding a grappling hook remains to be seen.
