Activists target 'unethical' sales (From Stroud News and Journal)

Activists target 'unethical' sales

GREENPEACE activists from Stroud stormed a timber merchants in Cirencester last weekend in protest against the sale of wood from threatened rainforests.

The activists confronted staff at Travis Perkins builders' merchants over the sale of Indonesian plywood of dubious origins and surrounded the offending products with yellow 'Forest Crime Scene' tape.

Greenpeace argues that Indonesian rainforests, which contain a frightening number of endangered species, are being illegally destroyed to line the pockets of the brutal Indonesian military, corrupt officials and timber barons.

Their position is strengthened by the UK Timber Trade Federation's recent comments that: "Indonesian mills are not able to provide sufficient evidence of legality and sustainability for the UK market."

Stroud activist Andrew Amer said: "The world's ancient forests are disappearing at a horrendous rate and an area of rainforest the size of Wales disappears every year.

"There is a huge loophole in international trade laws governing the timber market which allows illegally-logged wood to be processed and sold legally in this country.

"We want to encourage companies that are selling this stuff to stop." The campaign has been going on around the country, targeting two big timber merchants, Jewsons and Travis Perkins.

While Jewsons has agreed not to buy in more Indonesian plywood, Travis Perkins continues to stock it, though is making efforts towards replacing it with more ethical timber.

"We have been concerned about this issue for a some time, well before the Greenpeace campaign was launched," said Ian Goldsmith, group planning director for Travis Perkins.

"We have a team of independent forestry specialist auditors visiting our mill sources during July, the auditors will be preparing an action plan as guidance to the mills giving specific actions they could take to rectify any weaknesses found.

"The mills are therefore subject to our direct ethical and commercial pressure to ensure that they implement those action plans."

Mr Goldsmith welcomed Greenpeace's campaign to encourage consumers to buy only wood that bears the Forest Stewardship Council's logo which guarantees timber comes from socially and environmentally responsible sources.

"If everybody did demand Forest Stewardship Council approved products that would be fantastic because we would be able to go back to our suppliers and say, 'look there is a real demand for this'," he said.

He said many of the products stocked by the company already carried the logo but there was a problem sourcing large quantities of certified plywood.

"At the moment it's simply not available," he said.

"We have some ordered from Latvia and Brazil but the volume we're being offered at the moment is extremely limited.

"At the moment we'd be lucky if we could put one sheet of it in each store. "But we are committed to buying what we can."