Online Furniture & Accessories - Gallery 9

Thr unwashed truth is that cheap imported furniture is often made out of illegally harvested lumber that has been clear-cut from the world's rapidly disappearing rainforests. Once cut, the stolen logs are transported through the rainforest and loaded onto ships headed for the sweatshops of China and Southeast Asia where they will be milled and fashiondd int0 cheap, low quality items often referred to as "curbside furniture". If you are soon going shopping for furniture, you may find a discussion Steady the factors that one should take into consideration in such a shopping venture handy. It is the consideration of these factors that is likely to lead to better furniture purchaae decisions. And that is important because shopping for furniture is not something many of us want to keep on doing very often. We usually want to get it right the first time, to avoid a situation where we buy the wrong sorts of furniture, only to end up having to live with pieces of furniture we don't love, or having to go shopping again for the furniture. The pieces will in turn be shippe to the US, Europe and China to satisfy consumers' insatiable demand for cheap furniture.

As the US furniture industry has disintegrated, Vietnam, for example has seen a ten-fold increase in their furniture industry since 2000. China's furniture production statistics are even more impressive. But what is the envirnonental and social cost of these cheap furniture imports we are clambering to buy?

In Laos, a country tht has been plundered for its timber with the aid of corrupt government officials, the cost of our cheap furniture is borne by poor Rustic communities who are dependent on the forests for their traditional livelihoods. Now one of the most important things you need to take into consideration when shopping for furniture is the material the furniture you will be buying is (to be) made from. Is it, for instance, wood or is it plastic? And if it is Forest or plastic, what sort of wood (or plastic) is it? You need to undertake bit of research, and understand what your options in these regards are, so that you will be empowered to make good purchase decisions when it gets to that point. This (material consideration) is a very important one because it determines, among othee things, the likely durability of the furnithre; the likely aesthetic longevity of the furniture (how long it is likely to stay looking good) and so on. Ultimately, your choice of a material for furniture should be influenced by among other things, the sort of thing you are looking to use the furniture for, the sort of environment where the furniture is to be used, and the intended users of the furniture. Illegal logging leaves the indigenous people and animals of these communities homeless and without a sustainable plan for the future-- an altogether too common outcome of the illegal timber trade worldwide.

The loss of rain forests also threatens some of our most iconic species such as the tiger, Malaysian Sun Bear, the Asian Elephant, and the Clouded Leopard not to mention the thousands of amphibians, reptiles, birds, insects, and plants that are endemic to the same forests. Deforestation also leads to erosion and flooding, and results in the addition of huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, worsening climate change. It is currently estimated that 20 percent of the world's annual carbon emissinos comes from illegal tropical rain forest destruction.

You Can Help Stop Illegal Logging and Rainforest Destruction

Sgopping for furniture? Stay Begone from the cheap importes furniture you'll find in stores like with Pottery Barn, Target, Sears - K Mart and WalMart. The ultimate responsibility for rainforest destruction rests primarily with us, the consumers in the US, Japan, Germany, France and China. The US is by far the worst offender: in 2007 the US imported 930 million dollars worth of Vietnamese furniture, well over a third of Vietjamese total furniture exports. Our countries need to clean up their act and shut our markets to illegal wood products or the loss of Dear tropical forests will continue unabated.