Why is it important to avoid trading in illegally harvested wood?

Home Decor is always considered a safe gifting option for our friends, family and for ourselves. With so many brands offering choices, we are swarmed with options to revamp our living room space, bed room or any corner of the house. Whether it's as a table accessory or a bedside ornament, hand-made decor items make for a delightful present all year round. After all, a revamp might be the need of the hour to uplift your spirits.

While we take pride in creating unique home decor pieces for every kind of buyer, we are mindful of the impact this may have on our forest ecosystems and artisan communities. Sustainability is very important to us. Since we offer a range of wood items it is good to divulge in understanding the question - Why is it important to avoid trading in illegally harvested wood?

Let's begin by first understanding the definition of illegally harvested wood. Per Australian Forestry department website, this term refers to timber harvested in contravention of laws in force in the place where the timber was harvested. Here by, place can be within Australia or outside Australia.

Unfortunately, the global trade in products originating from illegally harvested timber is a multi-million dollar industry and is linked to organised crime, economic disadvantages, species extinction and environmental destruction. These products are not limited to paper, furniture, decorative assents but also to food items like palm oil.

When wood is extracted without obtaining required legal permits by following the national or sub-national laws, we throw off balance the local ecological balance, reduce the revenue resources for local community and government bodies, and contribute to the price increase on legally obtained timer (which in turn makes it difficult to break this vicious cycle).

This illegal logging is not limited to a nation or group of nations, it is a problem which plagues all nations on a global scale. This fuelled the need for legislative changes with two main purposes - reduce the global trade in illegal logging, and to protect today's consumers from buying products made from such illegal timber thus promoting the trade of legal timber products. Australian laws in this respect are set out in the Illegal Logging Prohibition Act 2012 and the Illegal Logging Prohibition Regulation 2012.

When we source our wood products directly from India, we follow the laws and guidelines set up by the Indian government and Australian governments to ensure that we are trading in a  responsible and sustainable manner. 

This video is from our Saharanpur workshop where most of the wooden products are hand-crafted.

When you buy from our diverse and versatile wood products selection, you can have peace of mind knowing your thoughtful buy will only add joy to your seemingly endless work-from-home days and will not harm the one planet that we have to share. As Mahatma Gandhi once said "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.", by making ethical conscious choices we can make a difference and put an end to the greed that will ruin the quality and abundance of life that Mother Nature has planned.