Why is it so important to buy sustainable wood?

• Posted on 26 March 2021
• By Josephine Walbank
• Posted in eco-consciousness, ecofriendly, environment, Forrest, FSC, Green world, Plant trees, sustainable, Wood
• 0

We want to help our customers understand more about how they can protect the environment in their day to day lives. It can be difficult to know what to do to help cut down our carbon footprint. Being aware of topics like this goes a long way. 

Being able to say that you live in an eco-friendly way is not simply a matter of putting your plastics in the recycling (although this is a great place to start). Adopting an eco-conscious mindset requires you to consider a wide range of different elements. 

Take your food shops as a great example of this. Even in just this one weekly task, there is so much that you can think about - you could avoid plastic packaging, buy organic foods, shop by the seasons, and consciously only buy food with low air miles. As you can see, there’s a lot to be mindful of. 

Another key example of this is wooden products. Many of us are (understandably) guilty of assuming that a product that is made of wood is automatically natural, and that it is environmentally friendly simply because it is made of a natural material. However, if this item is made using wood that is unsustainable, then it is responsible for far more environmental damage than you would expect. 

We want to help all of our customers understand more about how they can protect the environment in their day to day lives. It can be difficult to know what we can do to help cut down our carbon footprint - after all, where do you start? - but an awareness of topics like this goes a long way. 

So, we’ve used this blog post as an opportunity to provide you with a quick guide to buying sustainable wood. We’ll be covering what it means for wood to be classed as ‘sustainable’, why it is important, and Mini beee’s commitment to using completely sustainable wood. 

How is wood classed as sustainable? 

To be able to classify wood as sustainable, the producer needs to have produced this wood in an environmentally friendly way, which preserves the forest it came from. 

A sustainable production process of wood requires the landowner to maintain the overall health of the forest and protect the wildlife that is within it. This means that the trees will need to be replanted on a continual basis. 

In doing so, the forest and its health is being carefully monitored, and actions are constantly being taken to protect the ecosystem and health of this forest into the future. 

As such, when you purchase sustainable wood, you know that it has come from a sustainable forest. 

Why is it so important to buy sustainable wood? 

This all ties in to the ongoing issue of climate change. 

If we were to encourage the production of wood in an unsustainable way, where the forest was not protected and deforestation was allowed to occur (i.e. trees were being felled far faster than they were being re-grown), then this would significantly contribute to the speed of climate change. 

Furthermore, when wood is produced unsustainably, it can lead to the irreversible destruction of wildlife habitats, and threaten endangered or rare species, especially in tropical rainforests. 

Unfortunately, however, unsustainable wood production is not uncommon. 

According to the United Nations, every year 88,000 square km of natural forest is lost across the world. This equates to a forest the size of a football pitch being felled with every 2 seconds that passes.

It is vital that we exercise the power that we have as consumers, and make a conscious effort to only support producers that use sustainable wood. 

How can I be sure that I am buying sustainable wood? 

When you’re shopping, keep a lookout for certified logos that tell you that the wood in a product has been sourced sustainably. 

The FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) is a great example of a certified organisation that confirms the sustainability of the wood that is used within a product, or by a supplier. 

At Mini beee, we are absolutely committed to only ever using completely sustainable wood in all of our products. (Read more about our two trees for a sofa concept.) 

We use sustainable Douglas Wood in our range of products, which has been sourced from European forests. These forests produce wood in a careful and remarkably environmentally conscious way, which respects the forest and the eco-system within it. 

If you would like to find out more about what we do, and the ethos behind our products, you can browse our full range of eco-conscious wooden furnishings through the Mini beee online store.