I’ve been to the import stores and admired the rubberwood furniture. It tends to be pretty much the style of furniture I like – heavy, robust, the kind of thing you expect to be around in a couple of hundred years.
I’ve always thought, though, “gee, that sure looks cool. Too bad they’re cutting down the jungle to make these.” I never realized that rubberwood is actually more environmentally responsible than other hardwoods, in that they don’t cut down the trees until they’ve gotten old enough that they no longer produce latex, at which point they would be cutting them down already.
It’s like making oak furniture only from trees felled by storms or other natural causes – or even like making furniture from cornstalks!
Too bad I’m not getting a tax refund this year, or I’d be on my way to Birmingham to World Market.
April 16, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Nice blog!
October 9, 2007 at 3:58 am
Knight’s Links
Get all the latest info from this site
November 26, 2007 at 10:44 am
Furnitures gives a character to our homes or to wherever we wish to place it, but the source in making these is somehow alarming. Irresponsible cutting of trees has a great effects to the planet. We should find ways on how we can solve this that we may be able to produce furniture out of good wood without sacrificing the environment.
Kris
December 26, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Is it really Greener?
I too like to buy sustainable…and Rubberwood certainly looks ecologically friendly. From my Google search, I instantly found a few websites that stated exactly what you are saying above. Then I thought about it for a second…it is great that they “reuse” these otherwise cut down, old trees to make this furniture, but are all the Rubberwood trees old and been previously used to make rubber? Is it possible that as they are slashing and burning the Amazon and other jungles, they come upon these Rubberwood trees and simply toss them into the batch of trees to sell to foreign lands?
The answer is, unfortunately yes. Unless someone can show me a massive Rubberwood tree plantation, and show me pics of the guys cutting down the old trees and show me some figures showing that the rubber industry has used so many old trees that they can sustainably harvest the old trees to be reused for furniture, I’m going to believe that this is just another shell game being played on consumers. We’re trying to be responsible, and eco-friendly, and the interests of money are being used to fool us. Shame on whoever is doing that!!!
November 5, 2009 at 1:53 am
Pretty awesome stuff, I love it hah