Certified Environmentally Friendly Lumber Now in Local Stores
11/22/99
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Certified Environmentally Friendly Lumber Makes its Way Into
Local Stores
Source: The Seattle Times Company
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: November 22, 1999
Byline: Ross Anderson
In a complicated world, it was a matter of time before somebody found
a way to make the common, all-American two-by-four an issue of
environmental ethics.
But there it is - down the street from Safeco Field - a building-
supply store whose lumber comes with a certificate, a sort of Good
Housekeeping seal of approval that assures buyers the wood comes from
an environmentally friendly logging operation.
"That's all we sell," said Dana Hofmann, a salesman at Environmental
Home Center, 1724 Fourth Ave. S. "Basically, if it isn't certified,
we can't sell it."
Until recently, if you wanted to buy such wood, this was also the
only game in town. Today, however, a half-dozen or so local stores
specialize in lumber that is certified green.
And now such lumber is about to go major league. Home Depot, the
world's largest lumber retailer, recently announced it will phase out
suppliers not certified - a potentially decisive victory for a
fledgling environmental initiative.
Just this week, Plum Creek, a Seattle-based forest-products
corporation, announced all 3.3 million acres of company forests in
five states have been certified - albeit by a rival agency not
recognized by some environmentalists.
"This is the trend," said Bill Wilkerson, director of the Washington
Forest Protection Association, which represents large timber owners.
"The market seems to want to see a stamp of approval that says this
timber came from an environmentally sustainable forest. And
certification systems are emerging as the vehicle for doing this."
For Wilkerson and others in the timber industry, this is a remarkable
concession on the eve of a World Trade Organization conference, a
meeting at which global logging practices will be a target for
environmental protests.
Yet consumers don't seem to be demanding certified lumber. In fact,
most people never have heard of the stuff.
For those who have, the details are potentially confusing. Half a
dozen or more organizations with alphabet-soup names such as FSC,
SFI, SCS and ISO claim to be qualified to certify forests as
environmentally sustainable.
Yet it is too soon to say which, if any, will dominate the
marketplace, or whether certified lumber is going to improve the
health of embattled forests.
Forest certification dates only to the early 1990s, when
environmental groups organized the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC),
now based in Oaxaca, Mexico. The council describes itself as a
private, independent organization that supports "environmentally
appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management
of the world's forests."
The idea was this: People want to use wood, but they also want to
preserve forests. And they would like to think they could do both.
"People shouldn't have to become tree geeks just to buy a sheet of
plywood," said Mark Westlund of the Rainforest Action Network (RAN),
a San Francisco group that helped organize the Forest Stewardship
Council.
The council has developed criteria customized to each region and
authorizes groups in each region to inspect forests. The Northwest
Natural Resources Group, based in Port Townsend, conducts those
inspections in the Pacific Northwest. Compared with many other
environmental strategies, forest certification holds great promise,
said Jay Hair, a Seattle lawyer and former director of the powerful
National Wildlife Federation, one of the nation's largest
environmental groups.
"For a modest investment," Hair said, "there was the potential for
major environmental returns. Think where a timber-based town like
Forks would be today if that timber had been managed in a sustainable
manner; they would still have jobs in the woods."
The idea caught on quickly in Europe, where people are more
accustomed to green politics and consumerism. Some 25 million acres
of forests in Sweden, and 6 million acres in Poland, have been
certified under Forest Stewardship Council guidelines.
American companies, however, have been slower on the uptake. About 3
million U.S. acres are certified, mostly in Maine, Minnesota and
California.
The Northwest, home to the nation's richest forests, has been
especially resistant. Timber companies cite state laws that regulate
how private forests are harvested.
"Washington has the toughest forest standards in the nation," said
Bob Jirsa of Plum Creek. "In some respects, they're tougher than
certification."
But critics say Washington companies have been too preoccupied with
spotted owls and the Endangered Species Act to mess with
certification.
"It's been hard to break through the noise," said Larry Nussbaum,
program director for the Northwest Natural Resources Group, a Port
Townsend organization that conducts forest certifications for the
Forest Stewardship Council in this state. "We're just getting
started."
The big change came courtesy of Atlanta-based Home Depot. That chain
became the target of the Rainforest Action Network and other groups
that staged hundreds of demonstrations outside Home Depot stores,
hanging banners and handing leaflets to customers to focus attention
on the issue of lumber from old-growth trees.
The chain surrendered earlier this year.
"There is very little consumer awareness," said Suzanne Apple, a Home
Depot spokeswoman in Atlanta. "But we have a responsibility as the
market leader, and we take that very seriously."
"And there is a more practical side," she added. "Of the 50,000
products we carry, the great majority have a wood component. So we
need to do what we can to protect that supply over the long term."
Barely a year after the protests, company officers now are members of
the Forest Stewardship Council and attended its annual meeting in
Mexico.
This turnabout has not gone unnoticed across the country. The Irving
Co., which dominates Canada's Maritime Provinces, already has had its
New Brunswick timberlands certified by the stewardship council and is
awaiting the group's stamp of approval for more than a million acres
in the Maine woods. Irving officials say it is both good
environmental policy and good business; Home Depot is their biggest
customer.
Other big suppliers seem to be following suit. Home Base, a
California chain with several stores in the Seattle area, announced
this month that it will phase out sales of wood from endangered
forests and is studying the issue of certification.
But most private companies are openly wary of the Forest Stewardship
Council. They worry that environmentalists will "raise the bar,"
imposing more and more costly standards. So the industry established
a certification agency - the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI),
an arm of the American Forest and Paper Association.
Similarly, Canada has the Canadian Standards Association. Still
others, including Weyerhaeuser, have turned to the Geneva-based
International Standards Association.
"They all have similar objectives, but use different means to arrive
at them," said John McMahon, a Weyerhaeuser vice president. "The
evolution will be toward mutual recognition in the commercial
marketplace."
Maybe not, warned Nussbaum of the Port Townsend certification office.
There is one fundamental difference: His and other groups sanctioned
by the Forest Stewardship Council use outside "third parties" to
assess logging practices, while the industry relies on its experts.
Nussbaum says his group looks for whether a company is obeying
existing laws, whether it is preserving old-growth, protecting
wildlife and streams, using the best management practices, and how it
is affecting local communities.
It is not in the stewardship council's interest, he said, to close
down the woods. "We're actually helping companies to cut down trees
and market their lumber in a responsible way," he said. "We get
criticism from extremists in the environmental movement as well as
extremists in the timber industry."
In Seattle, Matt Freeman-Gleason sees all this as good
environmentalism, and good business.
In 1990, Environmental Home Center consisted of himself and an 800-
square-foot store on Bainbridge Island. Today he employs 10 people in
a 12,000-square-foot space filled with nontoxic paints and resins and
bamboo flooring as well as certified lumber. He ships his paints
across the country, but his lumber business is mostly local.
Prices are competitive. One-by-six certified pine sells for 54 cents
per foot - about the same for the uncertified pine at Home Depot a
few blocks away.
"People say they will pay more for an environmental product,"
Freeman-Gleason said. "But everyone has a budget, and we know we have
to be competitive."
He welcomes Home Depot to the business of selling environmentally
correct lumber. "We've been selling certified lumber for years," he
said. "And the toughest question we hear from our customers is: 'Why
isn't everyone doing this?' "