A campaign led by the British Furniture Confederation has come to Tree Couture’s notice that we strongly believe is worthy of everyone’s attention who cares for trees and our fragile environment.
A petition has been set up by the BFC to reform the current government subsidies that go to the energy companies to burn wood as part of their renewables quota. Instead of getting their quota from wood-waste materials, or end-of-lifespan products, virgin wood is being incinerated.
As we know so well, to use timber sustainably, it goes through a natural lifecycle from planting to manufacturing BEFORE being recycled and eventually burnt for energy. Energy generating companies should only be able to burn wood that has gone through this lifecycle. However, over recent years, there has been an increase in the burning of virgin timber and we have to do everything we can to stop this.
It is particularly poignant for us at Tree Couture, being a company that works exclusively with sustainable timber and that plants a same species native sapling for every piece of handcrafted furniture we make, but in addition to the environmental impact of this legislation, significant damage is also being done to our furniture industry where wood prices are rocketing as a result. In the last 5 years alone, wood prices have increased by 55.1% in the UK and the industry has seen many British furniture companies failing as well as major job losses as a direct consequence.
If you agree we must protect our virgin timber and help look after our great furniture industry, please spread the word and sign the petition at the following link – it will take less than a minute. http://www.biomass-petition.org/
Thank you from us all at Tree Couture.
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Photo by Troo Heath-Crew
