MAKE WEALTH HISTORY

We’re supporters of open source software here at Make Wealth History - programs that are released without the restrictions of copyright, and given away online. They’re often developed through the pooled expertise of generous developers, rather than a corporation, and I like the community and cooperation that they represent, and the fact that each release is a dent in the monopolies of companies such as Microsoft. Since the code is made publicly available, all kinds of reworkings and tweaks are possible, so you get more creative, dynamic, and playful software. Best of all, because open source programs are given away, they are accessible to those who may not otherwise be able to afford the technology. It is democratizing the tools of computing and levelling the playing field, and we’re all in favour of that.

The leading open source internet browser, FIrefox, celebrates it’s 3.0 launch tomorrow with a world record attempt at the most software downloads in a single day. If you would like to support the open source cause, just call in and download the latest version.

• Click here for a full list of open source programs.

One of the big problems with any big company shops, and supermarkets in particular, is that money leaves the local area. Think about it. If I spend £5 on fruit and vegetables at the little shop round the corner from my house, I know exactly where my money goes - it goes to Tony at Round Green Fruiterer, for him to use as he sees fit. He may go to the butcher two doors down and buy some sausages. The butcher may go to the florist, the florist to the launderette, the launderette supervisor to the off-license. Theoretically, my fiver could be spent several times along that same little stretch, each time passing from one local person to another.

If I go to Tesco for the same items, my £5 flies straight out of Luton and off to Tesco’s corporate headquarters, and probably re-emerges as someone’s city bonus.

Obviously that’s an oversimplification, but not grossly so. Andrew Simms gives a Luton-based example in his book Tescopoly, where the five Tescos within three miles of the Marsh Farm estate were found to be a major factor in the failure of re-generation efforts in the deprived neighbourhood. Reasearch found that nine out of ten people in the area shopped at the supermarkets. Others ordered takeaways from outside the estate. “For a community that was already poor,” writes Simms, “each of these spending patterns led to scarce cash leaking out of the area.” For re-generation to work, wages paid and profits made need to remain local. (This is as true of nations as it is of small English towns, which is why the IMF’s privatization agenda in developing countries is so unjust and counter-productive. But that’s another story)

One town in England has developed an interesting solution to this problem. To encourage people to spend money in local shops, and on local goods, they have launched their own currency. One Totnes pound is equivalent to one normal pound, but can only be spent in Totnes, in one of seventy participating shops or market stalls. “The currency distinguishes the local businesses that accept the currency from those that do not, building stronger relationships and a greater affinity between the business community and the locals” says one resident. “The people who choose to use the currency make a conscious commitment to buy local first. They are taking personal responsibility for the health and well-being of their community by laying the foundation of a thriving local economy.” Although the town hasn’t unanimously embraced the Totnes pound, it has proved very successful. Several small towns in Wales are considering similar schemes.

The idea came from across the pond, where Berkshares have become a viable alternative localized currency for the Berkshire region of Massachusetts, promoting what they call ’slow money’: “Slow money is not sleepy money but awake to the flow of economic life pulsing through a region, shaping its future, providing warning signs and creating options for public policy and private initiative. Perhaps the greatest task of concerned citizens in the twenty-first century is to reclaim responsibility for the consequences of our economic transactions–personally, institutionally, and in public spending. Slow money is the start of this process.”

Berkshares is supported by the E F Schumacher Society and the Rudolph Steiner Foundation, both interesting groups in their own right.

A few weeks ago I was out in Hertfordshire and went past a landfill site. You don’t see them very often, as they’re usually out of town and hidden behind large banks. I was reminded of my own brief experiences of a landfill site, and seeing as there’s quite a lot of interest in our previous postings on the subject, I thought I might share it.

Several years ago I did a stint of temping, one of those casual jobs where you show up each morning at six o’clock not knowing exactly what it is you’ll be doing, maybe manning an assembly line, moving boxes in a warehouse. One particular day I turned up with my steel-toed boots and found I was standing in for a driver’s mate who had called in sick - I was a bin-man for the day, manning a big blue Cleanaway truck (recently acquired by Veolia).  It was summer and it was hot, and it was actually great to be outside, running alongside the truck, wheeling great big bins back and forth from behind businesses and caterers. I even got a £5 tip for removing someone’s cardboard boxes.

Hooking the bins on the back and pressing the button, everything went into the back of the lorry, and when it was getting full you crushed it. The pistons would come down and slide the whole thing forward, mangling and crushing everything to making more room. It was all quite impressive, in a boy kind of way.

You can get a lot of trash in the back of a bin truck. Ours was half full when started in the morning, and we filled up all day before we passed the dump around two in the afternoon. I have no idea what the actual capacity is, I wasn’t asking too many questions of my gruff, chain-smoking, driver companion.

The landfill was near Bishop’s Stortford, off the main road and down a dusty but unassuming tree-lined lane. Behind the tree-line was a row of trucks, a burger van, pre-fab offices with men in high visibility vests milling about, plastic bucket seats in the sun, and a weigh-in for the lorries so you could tell how much you were unloading.

We kept the windows up, headed on down a short dirt track and over the bank, and the ground went from brown to grey as we rolled slowly out onto the densely compacted rubbish. Trash stretched out a couple of hundred yards in all directions, and a heavy yellow tractor with spiked rollers passed back and forth across the freshest deliveries, crushing them flat. Most bizarre of all, there was a huge net canopy across the whole site, suspended on cables from large posts. This was to keep the birds off, and frustrated seagulls circled overhead. It was a highly surreal place.

Two minutes later the truck had tilted its load, and we pulled out to refill it. I’d love to visit one again, with a camera this time, but of course you’re not exactly welcome on the premises.

The photo above is the Bishop’s Stortford landfill site, and you can explore it from the air right here. Have a look around. It’s the worst possible way to deal with waste, to stick it in the ground and forget about it. Even incineration is better than landfill. But in the UK we sent 77% of our waste to places like this.

Read more:

• The landfill problem
• The landfill prize
• Seafill (?)
• Where does your recycling really go?

We’ve talked a lot about oil on Make Wealth History, and the potential for conflict as supplies become increasingly limited, an explosive combination of rising demand and falling reserves. Unfortunately, oil isn’t the only resource worth fighting over, and in some parts of the world resource conflicts are much more elemental - the wars are over water.

You may not have heard of many of them, but the last 50 years have seen no less than 1,800 international disputes over water, 37 of which have become armed military conflicts. Perhaps the most serious was the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. In the 1960s Israel invested heavily in a system of canals and pipelines to bring fresh water from the Jordan River to the rest of the country, under an ambitious project called the National Water Carrier. In a ploy to weaken Israel, an alliance of Arab states attempted to thwart the plan by diverting the rivers that supply the Jordan, reducing the National Water Carrier by 35%. Israel attacked the building works in Jordan to protect their water supplies, and this provoked the border skirmishes that in turn sparked the Six Day War. The people of the occupied territories still live with the consequences.

Rivers
Like the Six Day War, many of the water conflicts are based around rivers. Rivers are a continuous supply of both water itself, and indirectly through irrigation, of food. Where rivers pass through more than one country, there may be competition. The Rio Plata, for example, is shared by Brazil and Argentina. The Nile passes through four countries, but supplies water to ten. The Danube is shared by 17 countries, the Niger by 11. All in all there are 19 international rivers shared by five or more nations. When an upstream country takes too much from a river, downstream countries run dry.

The Nile is particularly contentious. Under an old colonial agreement, Egypt was given the rights to three quarters of the Nile’s water, with the other quarter going to Sudan. But all the Nile’s water comes from tributaries upstream, the White Nile and Blue Nile in particular. Ethiopia needs more water, but if it draws it from the Blue Nile, it will be a violation of Egypt’s water rights. As Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram stated recently: “The Egyptian government has long recognized upstream development of the Nile waters as a potential national security threat and has stated its readiness to go to war to preserve its access to fresh water.”

Similar disputes fester between Turkey and Syria over the Euphrates, an argument that nearly spilled into armed conflict in 1998. The US meanwhile, regularly spars with Mexico over the Rio Grande. When drought hit northern Mexico recently, the country drew more than its allowance from the river that forms the US-Mexico border, leaving them in ‘water debt’ to the US.

Living downstream
It is usually the downstream countries that are most vulnerable, especially when your river crosses your border into someone else’s territory. Not only are your water supplies at risk, you may also receive your neighbour’s sewage and industrial waste, killing your fish and polluting your land.

One extreme example is the Aral Sea, in what Julian Caldecott describes as “one of the most spectacular ecological disasters of the Twentieth Century” in his book Water - Life in Every Drop.

Once the world’s fourth largest lake, the tributaries of the Aral Sea were diverted into the Kazahkstani desert so that the USSR could create a localized cotton industry. It succeeded, and the world’s most environmentally wasteful cotton is still grown in the region, but the effect on the Aral Sea was irreversible. You don’t need to look much further than the former port of Moynaq to see what happened - twenty miles of toxic sand and salt now lie between the port and the sea, and I don’t need to explain what that meant to the fishermen and traders.

The same problems exist within nations. Due to demand, China’s Yellow River no longer reaches the sea, drying up as industry and housing increased needs take more and more from it. This is currently leaving farmers without irrigation water and fishermen without catch.

A growing problem
Conflicts over water resources rose from five a year in the 1980s to twenty-two in 2000. Between 1990 and 1997, over $50 billion was spent by 23 countries engaging in conflicts over water for agriculture. Several factors are at play in the growing problem of world water supplies. One is population increase, and thus greater demand for water and for food. Another is increased standards of living. As more people gain running water and sanitation, demand rises again for showers and flushing toilets. Current climactic changes don’t bode well either, with changing rainfall patterns and the increased risk of drought and desertification.

Actions, debates, solutions
Water is an enormous problem, and one that will require major international cooperation. There are however a few things that could be done to ease the problem. One of the most important things is to cut down on water wastage, and this needs to be done at the top level.

For example, the US operates a water subsidy system that keeps irrigation cheap. Farming uses 80% of America’s water, and taxpayers pay $3 billion a year towards water subsidies. When farmers don’t have to pay a market rate for water, there is no incentive to conserve it, and so the subsidy system both allows and even encourages waste.

Bad water policies in the past need to be undone to make better use of water supplies. As I’ve already mentioned, much of the cotton grown in Central Asia is irrigated from the rivers diverted from the Aral Sea. Uzbekistan should not be able to grow cotton, it doesn’t have the climate for it, and so the cotton grown there uses far more water than it should. The kind of protectionist policies that demanded a local cotton industry are no longer required now the Cold War is over, and the region should be helped to adapt to growing more suitable and more sustainable cash crops.

As the world comes to terms with water shortages, some countries have proposed a very dangerous solution. I won’t go into it in detail now, but groups such as the World Water Commission have suggested that only the mechanisms of the market can guarantee stability in water supplies, and that all water sources should be privatized. By making it a commodity, a market will emerge and the balance of supply and demand will ensure that water ends up where it needs to be. I would argue the complete opposite, that water falls as rain and runs as rivers, that it’s a gift, and that like the air we breathe, access to water should be a fundamental human right. The commodification of water must be resisted. Obviously, privatizing water would put the power into the hands of the rich, and leave the poor even worse off than before. This isn’t happening yet, but like carbon trading, people can’t resist making an economic opportunity out of a disaster, and this will be a debate to watch over the next few years.

On a more personal level, the small choices that each one of us make every day add up to a huge amount of water. UK readers will be familiar with these, as the government has to remind us of them all when we get a dry summer - things like taking showers instead of baths, watering plants by hand rather than with a sprinkler, or not leaving the tap running when we brush our teeth. These actions do matter, particularly in water-stressed parts of the world.

Finally, there is the issue of water injustice. If you flushed a toilet today, you used more water in that one flush that 1 in 5 of the world’s people use in a whole day. Over a billion people still live without access to clean water, and a child dies every 20 seconds from water-borne disease. While people in developing countries use 10 litres a day, we in the UK use 150. While over 2 billion people live without proper sanitation, we have swimming pools, fountains, and beautifully green gold courses. I will mention them again in another post, but I would encourage you to support WaterAid or Samaritan’s Purse’s Turn on the Tap campaign to redress this balance, and bring water to those who need it most.

Find out more:

• Water - Life in Every Drop, by Julian Caldecott
• World Water Council
• Wateraid
• World Water Forum
• Why bottled water is a bad idea

Military spending and foreign aid are almost opposites. Not only is one about life and the other about death, military spending actually creates the need for aid. So you might hope that we put more money towards development and aid than we do towards the means to kill, but in fact our priorities are completely upside-down.

Aid or defence?
A quote from a book I was reading on Planet Management struck me hard.

“Count out 60 seconds and 3 of the world’s children will have died for lack of safe water/sanitation. Count out another 60 seconds, and within these two minutes the world will have spent $3.4 million on its military.”

In 2004 (when the quote above was written) the world spent approximately $1100 billion on instruments of death while billions of people were already fighting for their lives against hunger, thirst and disease. Over half of this ($623 billion) was spent by the United States (Second came China who spent $65 billion). That same year, ‘The Land of the Free’ spent $1 in aid for every $19 in defence. In 2005, the UK spent $42.8 billion on the military compared to the $1 billion spent by Bangladesh. Most of these figures are so huge they’re almost meaningless.

While the UK spent its $42 billion on the military, $10.75 billion was set aside for Official Development Assistance (ODA). In one year when the US spent over $600 billion on war and defence, it spent a meager $27.46 billion on ODA.

Between 1945 and 2000 there have been an estimated 50 million unnecessary deaths due to war and conflict. The number of deaths each year from social neglect reaches 7 million people (3.7 million deaths from malnutrition, 1.7 million from lack of sanitation, and 1.6 million from indoor smoke from cooking fires, for example) and yet in 2000, military spending from the “developed countries” was ten times the amount spent on aid.

Budgeting priorities
A year into the 2003 Iraq war, the United States had already spent $150 billion. Put to better use, this same amount of money would have provided better health care for 82 million American children. Internationally, that amount of money would have halved world hunger, leaving enough petty change to supply HIV/AIDS vaccines, childhood immunization, and clean water to developing countries for over two years. Rather than do that, the money was spent on such weapons as the “cruise missile”, one of which costs $800,000 (320 were launched at Baghdad). Between 2000 and 2005, America alone spent $2.2 trillion on military activities.

Sometimes the military is prioritised over basic education at home. In 2004 the US spent $413 billion on military and $437 billion on defence yet left only $60 billion for education. Poorer countries are often no better. In 2004 Ethiopia spent 5.2% of its GDP on the military and 4.8% on education, 1.8% on health. Costa Rica sets a better example with 4.4% spent on education and health and 0% on the military.

In 2003 the ‘developing countries’ spent $245 billion on military activities between them. It is estimated that an extra $6 billion would have been required to send 115 million children to school.

Missing targets, failing promises
As if this wasn’t all bad enough, we can’t even deliver the pittance in aid that we’ve promised to the poor. According to Oxfam:

“the latest figures represent the clearest sign yet that governments are badly off track for meeting G8 and EU goals for increasing aid spending, and are therefore in serious danger of breaking their promises to the developing world.”

The G8 leader’s summit in Gleneagles in 2005 pledged an increase of $50 billion by 2010, but Oxfam’s calculations predict a shortfall of $30 billion. Only Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden and Norway have met the promise made by rich countries in 1970 to give 0.7 % of their gross national income (GNI) as aid. Sadly, that percentage has fallen for two years in a row.

Are we as generous as we think?
According to George Bush, speaking just last week, “The American people are generous people and they’re a compassionate people. We believe in the timeless truth, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected’.” It would be nice if that were true. In the league tables of aid as a percentage of overall income, the US comes second to last. The US economy is vast, so the actual figures are still high, but it simply can’t be said that Bush believes in the much given, much expected principle. The US gives away just 0.18% of it’s income, against a global average of 0.31%, and a promised target of 0.7%.

Americans aren’t aware of this. A poll asked people to guess what percentage of the annual budget was set aside for aid, and they guessed it was around 20%. The truth is nearer 1.6%. And that’s the budget. Put that into the overall income, and you’ve got the 0.18% figure quoted above.

It’s a hard truth, and the same poll found that people didn’t believe it when they were told, but check the stats and see for yourself. It’s vital that people know this, or they’ll assume that everything is fine and nothing will change.

—

It seems humanity has reached a stage where destruction is endorsed over restoration. As people die and the environment with it, the world invests in death over life - forget sustainability for a moment - this is a matter of simple morality.

What can we do?

• We can talk about it. Do you know how much your country gives in aid? Ignorance of the needs is a big problem - why would you campaign on poverty issues if you already think that your country gives away 20% of it’s income already?
• Our governments have promised 0.7%. Let’s hold them to it. Most countries are going to miss that target (the UK is on track here). Write to your representatives and remind them.
• Support campaigns already working here. Oxfam, Make Poverty History and so on are doing good work already.
• Campaign to reduce military spending. This is a big one, because war is immensely profitable. It’s a matter of priorities. For example, the UK is considering replacing it’s nuclear arsenal. A new generation may cost as much as £76 billion, a phenomenal amount of money on an utterly obsolete technology - what use have we got for nuclear weapons now that the Cold War is over? Modern conflicts are completely different. Write to your MP urging them not to vote for any replacement to Trident. There are some good suggestions here.

Update: I just came across this post by Filip Spagnoli, on trends in world wars. Fascinating, and good to see a fairly consistent downward trend over the last century. Despite the rampant militarism of some nations, we seem to be slowly learning our lessons.

‘Jungle Capitalists - a Story of Globalisation, Greed and Revolution’ is the extraordinary story of the United Fruit company and their dealings in Central America.

The company began almost by accident in Costa Rica, with a railway constructor called Minor Keith growing bananas to sell to his workers. Once the railway line was in place and bananas could be shipped to the coast for export to the States, Keith realised he’d stumbled upon a remarkable business model. Over the next few years, railway lines were offered to many Central American governments in return for land, and exemption from taxes. The end result was huge plantations in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, the ‘Great White Fleet’ delivering to New Orleans and Boston, and a highly profitable emerging market for the banana.

As time went on, and the fortunes being made by the banana magnates failed to trickle down to the countries growing the fruit, there was unrest, and this is where United Fruit developed an unusual speciality - regime change. If the usual bribery and blackmail wasn’t enough to keep the land grants and tax breaks, the company would pay local rebels, or hire in mercenaries. The governments of Honduras and Guatemala were overthrown. The attempt to overthrow Cuba in the Bay of Pigs invasion was a memorable failure.

The company gets its comeuppance, which is always satisfying for such a story. United Fruit overstretched itself and collapsed in scandal and the suicide of its CEO in the 1970s. It was sold off in pieces, and lives on in a much smaller size as Chiquita.

What’s interesting about United Fruit is the way it pioneered a number of business practices in poorer countries that are followed by plenty of others today. Having read a lot on oil recently, I was struck at the similarities - government troops in Colombia intervened to violently quash a worker protest on a United Fruit plantation in 1929, and a massacre ensued. Today, local and US troops patrol Colombia’s pipelines, massacres have been carried out in the name of oil companies in Nigeria. In 2003 there was a failed coup in the tiny West African island of Sao Tome, an attempt to seize control of its extensive off-shore oil deposits. Were ExxonMobil involved, hoping a corrupt military government would be easier to work with than the democratically elected president? Perhaps we’ll know in a few years time, if the secrets of the oil companies are ever told.

Another aspect to the story is the United States’ casual disregard for the sovereignty of other countries when their business interests are a stake. The CIA feature regularly in the United Fruit story, and the company wielded considerable political clout, not least in the 1950. John Foster Dulles, a former lawyer for United Fruit, was Secretary of State. His Brother, Allen Dulles, was head of the CIA. It was during that era that the government of Guatemala was overthrown, ostensibly to prevent a communist uprising of course, but also because United Fruit had just lost some of their land concessions. Again, I can’t help thinking of oil, and the fact that Condoleeza Rice, a woman with a Chevron oil tanker named after her, has the power to overthrow countries and start wars in her role as National Security Advisor.

Finally, United Fruit are notable for pioneering PR. They were clients of Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew and not coincidentally the godfather of public relations. Applying the principles of Freudian psychology to advertising, Bernays developed the ideas of product placement, celebrity endorsement, and selling things with sex. For United Fruit, he publicized their (occasional) philanthropic endeavours in Central America, made educational films and radio programmes, and set up a MiddleAmerica Information Bureau to inform journalists about the realities of life in the growing regions. He encouraged United Fruit to donate to the exploration of the archaeological ruins that had been uncovered in the course of their jungle-clearing. Around this time United Fruit also developed the cartoon pin-up of Senorita Chiquita Banana, the singing, dancing banana, pre-empting characters from Ronald McDonald to Coco the monkey. Of course, these are all tricks we’re very familiar with today. You can’t spend long in a Starbucks without finding some assertion of their good works in developing countries, despite the fact that you have to specifically ask for Fairtrade at the counter. And of course the educational film. I collect short films, and the one below is one of my favourite bits of corporate propaganda.

Anyway, I recommend Jungle Capitalists. Peter Chapman tells the tale like a spy thriller, and it’s an easy and engaging read. There are some asides about the crisis in banana genetics (see this earlier post), and the consumer discovery of the banana is particularly fascinating, with bananas on display in exhibitions, served as delicacies, and celebrated in song. The book could have done with a bit of an update on the state of the world fruit business today and the whole Fairtrade issue, but I guess you can’t cover everything.

UK Supermarket giant Tesco launched a new labeling system last week to indicate the carbon footprint of various products. With hopes for wider adoption and even a new industry code, the symbols will start out on just 20 different items.

But would you know what the numbers mean?

Read the report on Celsias…

Just a quick note on a political matter in the States right now. Congress is currently putting the final touches to it’s latest Farm Bill, a vast and sprawling set of agricultural policies that comes around every five years. There are all sorts of unjust and environmentally unsound aspects to it, but among them is a particularly pernicious policy on food aid, which may have serious repercussions for the global food crisis.

Under the regulations, all food aid would have to be bought in the US. It’s a simple idea - billions of dollars are spent in aid every year to help out hungry countries who have suddenly found themselves with no food. If those billions are spent in the US, they’ll contribute to the US economy, and the food can then be shipped to the places it is needed. It’s been standard practice for some time.

At face value, that’s a waste of time and shipping. It usually takes four months longer for ‘emergency’ food aid to reach the hungry if its sourced in the US. But dig a little deeper - the food aid could be bought locally, from farmers within the country that are still producing, or from the nearest places with a surplus. This would support local farmers and suppliers, and help to build local agriculture for the future. Instead, the US puts its own economy first, and the result is a glut of foreign food aid that undercuts local farmers. When local agriculture is undermined in this way, farmers go bankrupt. The net result is that for the sake of US profits, even less food is grown in countries where people are already starving.

It had been proposed that at least a quarter of emergency food aid should be bought locally, but this has been removed in favour of an opportunity to shift US surpluses - essentially a form of subsidy at the expense of the starving. It’s a shameless and craven policy that makes the global food crisis far worse. It’s the worst kind of ‘aid’, that is only thinly disguised profiteering.

It’s not too late to stop this, or at least to re-introduce the one-quarter clause. The Farm Bill hasn’t passed yet, and Sojourners are campaigning on it at the moment. If you’re an American reader, please Click here for their current form letter, and petition your congressman.

• Update: George Bush has just announced an extra $770 million in food aid, making this even more important than before.
• My fiancee Lou’s report on the price of rice, for Chiltern Radio

Two things that made me think about the landscape of the city in the last couple of weeks. First, an observation from the Bonfire of the Brands blog:

“If you replaced every logo, advert and brand image you see on the high street with a quote from the Bible, you would feel that you were living in an intolerably strict religious state. I mean, if you took all the billboards and put Jesus on them, there’d be a revolution. If you replaced the icons of one ideology with the icons of another, you realize the absurdity you’ve been living with, everyday, your whole life.” - Matthew De Abuita

Secondly, the photography of Gregor Graf, who has taken images of London and stripped them of all the visual clutter, leaving ghost-town versions of the streets.

(This one in particular caught my eye, because it’s round the corner from the office. I snapped the same scene getting off the bus the other day, although it doesn’t quite deliver the ‘before and after’ vibe I was hoping for.)

The point is, we are exposed to thousands of marketing messages every day, urging us to spend. It is the city we live in, the air we breathe. Re-imagining the landscape with alternative messages, or seeing it cleared of the clutter, reveals just how pervasive consumerism can be. We are immersed in its propaganda, and it so all-encompassing we don’t even notice any more. It goes unquestioned, and unchallenged, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

And realising that, perhaps we can be more aware of the messages around us, and learn to tune them out a little more.

A brief entry on sustainable wood.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is “an international not-for-profit membership-based organization that brings people together to find solutions to the problems created by bad forestry practices and to reward good forest management.”

The FSC is an international organization that encourages sustainable and responsible use of the world’s forests. It sets international standards for forest management and “accredits independent third party organizations who can certify forest managers and forest product producers to FSC standards”

Those of us involved in wood work, or are purchasing wood for whatever reason should keep an eye out for the internationally recognized FSC trademark and support the work of sustainable forest logging.

It is also worth noting that you can buy FSC paper and toilet roll. The symbol can usually be found on the packaging if the product has come from a sustainable source. Considering that these items are both products that we use almost without thinking lets make the effort to know it isn’t adding to the conglomeration of pressures on the world’s forests.

Read more here and here

(I’ve been told B&Q use only FSC products and thanks to “Zoky” we have a link. Read here to see their policy on sustainable wood.)