tim vireo's Profile

The fact that a reselling company is certified by an FSC accredited certifier in no way assures that the product is from a certified logging operation. A reseller's certification is called Chain of Custody (COC). COC certified resellers aren't required to sell a stick of certified wood. What one needs to see is the producer certificate. If VIFAH or any other company can't produce it on request than their COC certification should be withdrawn.

I don't know for sure but suspect that VIFAH's ipê is not from certified forests, especially since certified ipê is getting harder to come by (Duy, perhaps you can prove me wrong and produce the producer certificates).

Even if VIFAH's ipê is from FSC-certified producers, this in no way means it's sustainable. The studies are in: the scientific consensus is that commercial logging in old growth rainforests cannot be done sustainably.

Certifiers certify "well managed" forests, not "sustainable" forests. There's a huge difference. Yet the certifiers and the FSC have allowed the misrepresentation to be perpetuated in the media and on the web so that people believe it's the same thing.

Certifiers don't know what "sustainable" is (and can't, until we are around for another thousand years, observing forests that have been producing under a certification scheme for that long). They have arbitrarily decided what "well managed" means (albeit "peer" reviewed) and certify only that. It's critical that people don't confuse the two.

Ipê (and all imported wood originating from old growth tropical forests) should be avoided at all costs, since there's no such thing as an ipê plantation and all ipê is coming from formerly unlogged forests. These trees are 250 to 1000 years old and support perhaps 1500 species of beetles on a single tree.

There are many alternatives to ipê. Our first suggestion is using genuine recycled plastic lumber (RPL) (as opposed to wood-plastic composite lumber, which will rot, warp and split). Offsetting the logging of forests from 5 – 20 times over, RPL can be considered one of the most environmentally friendly products on Earth.

If plastic is not an option, there are a number of domestic second- and third-growth woods out there that are extremely durable. Black locust will last longer than ipê, even trees that are 40 years old. There are lots of black locust fence posts still functioning that were put in the ground untreated more than 70 years ago. Coney Island's ipê has lasted about 25 years.

Contact Rainforest Relief (rainforestrelief.org) to find out more. Robinwood™ black locust decking can be purchased from Bettencourt Green Building Supplies (bettencourtgreenbuildingsupplies.com).

For the forests,
tim keating, director