How Do I Know That The Furniture I Am Buying Comes From Sustainable Forests?

It is not always easy to tell whether furniture which purports to be from susutainable woodlands is indeed genuinely so.  There are a number of furniture manufacturers who have a certification scheme, whereby they can guarantee that the wood is from sustainable forests and/or managed in an ethically appropriate way.  So it would be wise to check with furniture shops as to whether they stock furniture which details how the wood has been produced. Often these are more expensive than less ideologically sound products.   It is also possible to buy some sustainable wood products on line or from smaller independent producers.

As a general rule, it is better to avoid the use of either mahogany or teak, which are woods which are primarily produced within the rainforests and consequently are often not from a sustainable source, given that the rate of deforestation within rainforests is somewhere in the region of 1 acre per second.