Someone always tries to spoil the party. Just as we were gearing up last Wednesday for The Wood Awards, the increasingly prestigious celebration of timber in UK architecture and interiors, we learned that Greenpeace activists had chained themselves to a pile of Chinese plywood outside Defra’s offices. They claimed the product contained illegally-felled timber from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. They said that plywood importers were complicit in rainforest destruction and reiterated their view that the UK is one of the biggest importers of illegal timber generally.
Of course, we couldn’t possibly comment on whether Greenpeace timed the action to queer the pitch for The Wood Awards (it was probably coincidence that on the same day last year it wrongly claimed that some of the Awards projects themselves used illegal timber). Likewise it’s probably a bit far-fetched to allege that the demo included an element of backlash after the government’s acceptance of alternative certification schemes as proof that timber is sustainable, in addition to Greenpeace’s favoured FSC.
That said, the UK industry agrees that there should be no hiding place for any company which knowingly imports illegally sourced timber. Evidence of this commitment includes the work of the Timber Trade Federation with Defra, and its involvement with the Tropical Forest Trust tracking project and the EU‘s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade action plan.
In the event of environmentalist attacks the consensus is that the trade should both investigate the allegations and talk up the measures it is taking on the environmental front – and it’s encouraging that the TTF issued a robust response for members to use in this instance (although a little less so that few firms, it seems requested copies).
But back to the Wood Awards. As it turned out, the party went with a swing, unfazed by the demo down the road. The winning projects were fantastic adverts for timber and the winners punched the air with excitement, underlining the growing reputation of the event. It has become yet another weapon to add to the trade’s public relations armoury.
