Greenpeace UK campaigner Andy Tait responds to comments in RIBA Journal’s recently-published hardwood guide
At the same time as Greenpeace launches an unprecedented collabo-ration with Timbmet to help architects specify hardwoods responsibly and advertises this in the RIBA journal hardwood guide, the editor of the guide claims that we are calling on architects to avoid all hardwoods and stick to softwoods. Not true.
Perpetuating the old myth of a “tropical hardwood campaign” may make good editorial fodder for lazy commentators, but as well as being wholly inaccurate it serves only to further confuse those who are trying to specify the right kind of timber.
Greenpeace is, as I told the editor of the RIBA journal and stated in a recent piece in TTJ, pro timber that is inde-pendently certified as from well managed sources. It is illegal and destructively logged timber that’s the problem (affecting both hardwoods and softwoods) and we’ll continue to campaign to eradicate it from the timber trade in the UK and elsewhere.
