Wednesday, May 9, 2007

What a waste of wood


In our supermarket here in New Jersey they sell firewood, and not just any firewood, but 4-5 pieces of "Real Wood from Real Forests" from the brand "Estonian Forest" (with headquarters only 25 miles from here). Yes, it is from Estonia. Each package costs $8, which I guess is about 100 Swedish crowns or so. And it is not even enough for a real fire, just for dinky fires in rich men's McMansions over here. Think about all the energy it has taken to get the wood here, shipped on container ships across the world just so we can have Estonian wood. It is not like we don't have forests and wood here in America! :)

I am also afraid that Estonia's forests are being plundered by large companies and soon it will just be clearcut. Have you heard anything about this in Sweden? Is the forestry regulated at all in Estonia? Maybe in 10 years there won't be much forest left in Estonia, because they export not only to here but to many, many countries in Europe too. I know there are people that work hard against illegal logging, like the Estonian Green Movement.

Our mom would be rich if she could get 100 SEK for 5 little pieces of wood :)

4 comments:

EH said...

http://www.worldrevolution.org/article/944

I don´t remember how to give you an actual link, som cpoy-paste.

Here you can read about forest proctection in Europe, Estonia is no good enough according to this survey.

But, I still believe that it takes a consument (read american people) to buy a product. I don´t think you can tell Estonia they can´t sell to America. But Americans should know they ought to use native materials instead of imported across the pond!

/E.H/ Sweden

LS said...

Ha, Americans... Most don't care where something comes from, just that it is either cheap or fancy. Estonian wood goes under fancy. I was thinking about talking to the store manager but I needed more information before that.

PP said...

Gee, i didn't know that americans were "The World's Only Consumers"

LS said...

OK, Consumers are everywhere, I agree. But I doubt they export Estonian wood to China, what do you think? And I was talking about the kind of Americans that shop at Wal-Mart, not people like us that care and think more.