Shopping for Furniture or Cabinets? Buy Only Items Made of Renewable Woods.

[MineralMan]

Take a close look at the materials used to make the wooden furniture, hardwood floors and cabinets you buy. That beautiful wood grain may be destroying tropical rainforests. Instead of exotic woods, choose furniture made with renewable hardwoods that are sourced from the US. Maple, Walnut, Oak, Birch, Ash, Hickory, Sycamore, and other domestic hardwoods are renewable resources. Exotic woods with romantic-sounding names almost all come from tropical rainforests that are being clear-cut to supply solid wood and veneers for custom cabinets and furniture. Those woods are often very beautiful, and attractive to buyers, but they're disappearing, because the rainforests are disappearing.

At one time, for example, Mahogany was the most popular hardwood used in furniture. That was during the 18th and 19th centuries. The species of tree that produced that mahogany is now gone. It is virtually extinct. What is called mahogany today is from other rainforest species, because the original wood is unobtainable. Ebony, Grenadilla, Rosewood, and many others have suffered the same fate. Soon, its replacement woods will also be unattainable.

Back in the 1980's I used to design and build woodworking projects for several popular magazines. Early in that career, I made the decision to use only renewable hardwoods for those projects. I could have used anything I wanted, since I never had to pay for the materials I used for those projects, but I recognized the danger that popularizing exotic rainforest hardwoods represented. It took a while to convince the editors of those publications that we should not be designing projects that used such woods, but eventually I succeeded and all of my projects specified domestic, renewable hardwoods.

So, when you're shopping for furniture, hardwood flooring or kitchen cabinets, just say no to woods with exotic-sounding names. Stick with woods that come from US mills and that are renewable. Somewhere, a tree in a rainforest won't be cut down for your pleasure. The effect won't be instantaneous, but it will be real.

Exotic hardwoods are beautiful. There's no question about that. Renewable hardwoods are beautiful, too, in their own way, and that beauty is magnified by not exploiting endangered rainforest species.