Wood, We Need it More Than We Know.
Wood products are hard to ignore, they are all around us, from the frame of your house, to the table you sit at, there is no doubt that wood is of immense value. Unfortunately it’s sheer flexibility in the number of applications it is used for, means that it is one of the most sought out resources in the world.
Wood comes to us in the form of various species of trees, each having their own desirable characteristics depending on where they grow throughout the world. But trees are not just useful for building resources, they serve as habitats for various species within their ecosystems, provide life for countless living organisms, and work as scrubbers of the worlds carbon-dioxide – a dangerous greenhouse gas, that has become increasingly significant in today’s global warming debacle.
It is then, no surprise, that the source of our wood products are an integral part of our ecosystem and a living resource that we should strive to protect and preserve with all our efforts.

Problems in the Timber Industry as it is Related to Environmental Sustainability.
A problem that exists today is the sheer profits earned in the timber industry by the various
loggers, manufacturers and vendors. Further to this, an unfortunate oversight is that most of the logging and manufacturing is performed in countries where trees are abundant, but strict enforcement and regulations against their harvest is not. Without control, the rate of deforestation not only surpasses our ability to rebuild these forests, but threatens the delicate balance of our world’s ecosystems and our very lives.
Sourcing from wood production mills throughout poorly regulated areas such as Russia or China causes significant on-going effects not only to the timber trade industry but the more important global environment. Documented cases have occurred where woods have been illegally marked as certified or from approved sources, or where wood products have been labeled as species other than their actual contents. Illegally harvested woods are cheap to acquire and therefore present an unfair competitive advantage against mills who log from approved sources and according to the regulations set by the local authorities. In addition, their reduced cost promotes strong demand from the top wood consuming countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom further supporting the use of illegally harvested timber.

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