Leather furniture – what are you buying?

People like to buy leather furniture because of leather’s durability (it’s advertised to last a lifetime) – even though it demands a bit of attention to keep it looking its best.   Manufacturers also like to portray leather (perhaps because of its high price) as conveying luxury and sophistication.

Leather has been used practically forever –  ancient peoples used materials that were available, like bark and plant tannins, alum, earth minerals, fish oils, animal brains, lime and smoke to preserve animal skins.  The natural tanning process takes a long time – from 1 to 12 months.  It often also relies on physical manipulation.

Today’s leather is a far cry from  early leathers because horribly toxic synthetic chemicals have replaced the older tanning chemicals (usually in the interest of time – chrome tanning takes only a fraction of the time as does “natural” tanning); modern leather tanneries are frighteningly toxic and the animal husbandry aspect is sad and sickening. There are a very few ethical tanneries, but so far I can count them on one hand.  [1]

Let’s take a look at what that leather on your sofa means to us today.

Many people think that leather is a by-product of the meat industry, and that buying leather does not increase the number of animals slaughtered.  But in the case of some animals, the meat is the by product – on ostrich farms, the leather account for 80% of the dead animal’s value.[2]  Some leather – made from more exotic animals like kangaroos, zebras, seals, snakes, lizards and even sharks – are either raised or hunted specifically for their skins. [3] Regardless of how you define it, the skin is not a “leftover” since processing it as leather accounts for about 10% of the slaughtered animal’s overall value,[4] generating significant profits for both factory farms and the leather trade itself.  In fact, without the lucrative sale of animal skins for leather, factory farms would not even be able to turn a profit by selling meat alone. Ultimately, buying leather products subsidizes factory farms while providing financial incentive for them to produce more leather.

Most leather comes from cattle who are slaughtered for meat, worn-out dairy cows who no longer produce enough milk to be profitable, and veal calves whose soft skin is particularly valuable.  These animals often suffer in many ways that are detailed on various websites (such as Liberation BC: Speaking out for Animals and PETA) – it is such a gut wrenching, gruesome story that I can’t even bring myself to talk specifics.

Let’s face it – leather is the skin of a dead animal.  It is, by nature, meant to decompose.  What do you think has to be done to that skin so it doesn’t decompose?

After 75 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, few items aboard the R.M.S. Titanic had survived the ravages of saltwater.  But leather items hadn’t rotted away because their chrome tanning prevented their decay.[5]

The global leather industry is composed of three sectors of activity: animal husbandry and slaughter, tanning, and product manufacturing. Tanning is the stage in which raw leather is processed and made more durable so that it doesn’t decompose in your living room. Tanning consists of two major processes:

1. Wet blue production (so called because the semi-finished hide is given a chrome bath which imparts a blusih tint).  This process involves removing unwanted substances (salt, flesh, hair, and grease) from a rawhide (by soaking in a bath of lime and sodium sulfide to dissolve hair and flesh), trimming it, treating it to impart the desired grain and stretch, and finally soaking it in a chrome bath to prevent decomposition.  This step is far more polluting than finishing, generating 90% of the water pollution associated with leather tanning.[6]
2. Finishing – Finishing involves splitting, shaving, re-tanning, and dying the wet blue.

Often leather is advertised as being “aniline dyed”.  That means the leather is dyed for color without any pigments applied.  These dyes enhance the subtle variations of each hide and the leather does not lose any structure or grain pattern.  It is often considered to be of a higher quality than other types of dyed leather because aniline dyed leathers develop a  distinctive patina over time. Only premium hides with the most pleasing color and texture are selected for this category, less than 5% of all upholstery hides in the world.

Semi-aniline, also referred to as “Aniline Plus”,  is also advertised.  These leathers are first dyed in the penetrating aniline dyes. Then a topcoat is applied to even out the color of the hide surface. The topcoat also serves to create fading- and soil-resistant pieces.  They retain a great amount of the softness of aniline dyed hides because the natural top grain is left intact. A much larger proportion of the worldwide hide supply is suitable for this class of leather and as a result they are more moderately priced than pure aniline dyed hides.

So now we come to the part about the problems with using leather – you knew it was coming.

According to the results of a three year study to address health impacts of pollution from the Blacksmith Institute, which works to solve pollution problems in the developing world,  the tanning of leather is in the top 10 of the world’s worst pollution threats,  at #5, directly affecting more than 1.8 milllion people.[7]

Blacksmith’s Bret Ericson, who managed the three-year project, says:  ”These are not large-scale, multinational corporations that are responsible for this pollution. Typically, it’s low income, small-scale industries who have no emissions controls,” often because these outdated industries remain unregulated.

Because of the acknowledged hazards of leather production, the process is being discontinued in most European countries and the U.S., and operations are moving overseas.   Because of the relatively inexpensive cost of labor and materials, over half the world’s tanning activity occurs in low- and middle-income countries.  Leather tanneries are highly concentrated in Nepal, Bangladesh and India.  Bangladesh Tanners Association President M. Harun Chowdhury said, “Most of the European countries and USA are discontinuing leather processing, as [the] leather industry is an environmentally hazardous one.”[8]

Spurred by retailer demand in the West, leather buyers in Asia have been welcomed with open arms by governments all-too-eager for a slice of the global market, and happy to turn a blind eye to non-existent safety regulations in return. Regulations governing tannery pollution have been on the books for decades in countries such as Mexico. Among other things, they require tanneries to register with environmental authorities, install sedimentation tanks and water gauges, handle most solid wastes as hazardous materials, and— most important—pretreat wastewater so that daily concentrations of various pollutants do not exceed set standards. For the most part, however, these regulations are simply not enforced.[9]  One of the reasons mentioned for this, cited by Allen Blackman,  is that tanneries are often a mainstay of the local economy and therefore enjoy considerable political power.

So today Hazaribag, Dhaka, home to many leather tanneries,  the  once  pleasant, semi-rural district in the Bangladeshi capital, is now a wasteland of toxic swamps, garbage landfills and mountains of decomposing leather scraps, surrounded by slums where tannery workers live.  Piles of smouldering trash line the banks of the nearby Buriganga, which is classified as a “dead” river after it hits Hazaribag as pollution from the tanneries has made it impossible for any fish or plantlife to survive.

Every day, the tanneries collectively dump 22,000 cubic litres of toxic waste, including cancer-causing chromium, into the Buriganga — Dhaka’s main river and a key water supply — according to the ministry of environment.

More than 90 percent of the tannery workers suffer from some kind of disease — from asthma to cancer — due to chemical exposure, according to a 2008 survey by SEHD, a local charity, with local residents being almost as badly affected.[10]

This is The Ecologist Film Unit’s Jim Wickens take on what the situation is in Dhaka:

What chemicals are used to create such terrible pollution?

In all, around 250 chemicals are used in tanning. Skins are transferred from vat to vat, soaked and treated and dyed.   Chemicals include alcohol, coal tar , sodium sulfate, sulfuric acid, chlorinated phenols (e.g. 3,5-dichlorophenol), chromium (trivalent and hexavalent), azo dyes, cadmium, cobalt, copper, antimony, cyanide, barium, lead, selenium, mercury, zinc,  polychlorinated biphenyels (PCBs), nickel, formaldehyde and pesticide residues.[11]  At the same time, toxic gases like ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and carcinogenic arylamines are emitted into the air. The smell of a tannery is the most horrifyingly putrid smell on earth.

Groundwater near tanneries has been found with highly elevated levels of a variety of toxic substances. The Regis Tanning Co., Inc., operated a tanning facility from the early 1950s until 1972 in New Hampshire. But more than 20 years after it closed down, groundwater samples collected in the area revealed that arsenic, chromium, lead, and zinc were all still present—likely because of wastes disposed of on the property—while samples taken from nearby Lamprey River and its wetlands indicated the presence of cyanide, chromium, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).[12]

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the incidence of leukemia among residents near one tannery in Kentucky was five times the national average.[13]

Arsenic, a common tannery chemical, has long been associated with lung cancer in workers who are exposed to it on a regular basis. Several studies have established links between sinus and lung cancer and the chromium used in tanning. [14] Studies of leather-tannery workers in Sweden and Italy found cancer risks “between 20% and 50% above [those] expected.” [15]

And that aniline dye that is often advertised as non toxic:  not according to these sources:  Aniline is toxic by inhalation of the vapour.   ^[16] The International Agency for Research on Cancer(IARC) lists it in Group 3  (not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans) due to the limited and contradictory data available.  It is linked to bladder cancer.[17]

What about vegetable-tanning, which is sometimes touted as an environmentally-friendly alternative to chrome-tanning? Vegetable-tanning is actually only different from chrome-based in one way: it uses vegetable dyes rather than, perhaps, aniline dyes, to give the leather a “more subtle, muted colour.”[18]The preparation of the skin for tanning is the same, and though vegetable-tanning eliminates the toxins produced during the process of chrome-tanning, it also has its limits: being stiffer and firmer than chrome-tanned leather, it can be used for saddles, belts,  and leather carving, but often not for shoes, coats, or anything that requires much flexibility. Additionally, when exposed to water and allowed to dry, it can discolour and shrink, becoming brittle.

As mentioned in the first footnote above, there are a few companies that are trying to transform the industry and to educate consumers about leather, such as Organic Leather in California.  They seek to “return reverence to the practice of working with leather…to pay homage to the tribal peoples of our world and to encourage respect for the quality of the animals’ lives, from the way they are raised to the way they die…(and) to make sure that no part of the animal already being harvested goes to waste.  Moreover, we are strongly concerned with the chemicals used in the tanning and dyeing process and their effects on the natural environment and the health of both workers and customers.”

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[1] Organic Leather, in California,  is trying to create high-quality and stylish leather while working to transform the industry and educate consumers.  See their white paper: http://www.organicleather.com/organic_leather_white_paper.pdf

[2] Kate Carter, Don’t Hide from the Truth, Guardian.co.uk, 27 Aug. 2008

[3] Leather Made From different animals, Leather Supreme, May 13, 2008 AND “Animals Abused and Killed for their Skins”, PETA media center, 2010.

[4]  http://liberationbc.org/issues/leather

[5] Davis, John, “Method for safer leather tanning published by Texas Tech researchers”, Texas Tech Today, November 2007.

[6] Blackman, Allen, “Adoption of Clean Leather-Tanning Technologies in Mexico”, discussion paper, Resources for the Future, August 2005

[7] http://www.globe-net.com/articles/2011/november/11/world’s-10-worst-toxic-pollution-problems/

[8] Jasim Uddin Khan, “Local Tanners Eye Bright Prospect as US, EU Quit Leather Processing,” The Daily Star 20 Dec 2007.

[9] Blackman, Allen, “Adoption of Clean Leather-Tanning Technologies in Mexico”, discussion paper, Resrouces for the Future, August 2005

[10] Barton, Cat, “Workers pay high price at Bangladesh tanneries”, AFP, Feb. 2011

[11] Ibid.

[12] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Regis Tannery,” Waste Site Cleanup and Reuse in New England 9 Aug. 2006.

[13] Richard E. Sclove et al., Community-Based Research in the United States (Amherst: The Loka Institute, 1998) 52.

[14] Richard B. Hayes, “The Carcinogenicity of Metals in Humans,” Cancer Causes and Control 8 (1997): 371-85.

[15] France Labrèche, Occupations and Breast Cancer: Evaluation of Associations Between Breast Cancer and Workplace Exposures (Montréal: McGill University, 1997).

[16] Muir, GD (ed.) 1971, Hazards in the Chemical Laboratory, The Royal Institute of Chemistry, London.

[17] http://www.pathologyoutlines.com/topic/bladderurothelialinvasivegen.html  AND Carreon, Tania, et al, “Increased bladder cancer risk among workers exposed to o-toluidine and aniline: a reanalysis”, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2010; 67:348-350

[18] Elizabeth Olsen, Can Leather Be Eco-Friendly…Ever?, Ecouterre, 19 Oct. 2009

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Is biomass carbon neutral?

Global climate change is the major environmental issue of current times. Evidence for global climate change is accumulating and there is a growing consensus that the most important cause is humankind’s interference in the natural cycle of greenhouse gases. (Greenhouse gases get their name from their ability to trap the sun’s heat in the earth’s atmosphere – the so-called greenhouse effect.)

CO₂ emissions are recognized as the most important contributor to this problem. Since the turn of the 20th century the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases has been increasing rapidly, and the two main causes have been identified as:

1. burning of fossil fuels and
2. land-use change, particularly deforestation.

And now the world has discovered plants.  People seem to think there is some magic in nature – that they can keep taking and things will grow back.  We can buy “carbon offsets” to mitigate our guilt – trees planted to “offset” our energy consumption for, maybe, a plane ride to Hawaii.

Because the carbon emitted when plants are burned is equal to that absorbed during growing, it seems self-evident that biomass is a zero carbon (or carbon neutral) fuel.[1]  The thinking goes like this:  Plants are busy converting CO2 to stored (“sequestered”) carbon in their branches, roots, stems and leaves – so when that plant is burned, the carbon which is released (as CO2) is replaced by another plant which is busy sequestering that carbon.

Why is burning fossil fuel – which  also releases CO2 when burned  – not considered to be carbon neutral?  As far as I can tell, it’s a matter of definition.  Today, the definition of carbon neutral means that the greenhouse gases released  by burning fuel is the same or less than the carbon that was stored in recent history (translation = plants, which grow and mature within 100 years or so, i.e., “recent history”). Releasing carbon that was stored in ancient history, such as  burning fossil fuels (which comes from plant material millions of years old)  introduces extra carbon to the environment. Because fossil fuels contain carbon that was in the environment in ancient times, by burning fossil fuels we release greenhouse gasses that wouldn’t naturally be there!

That concept took off.  Beginning with the Koyoto Protocol, which overlooked reduction targets for biomass, others embraced the concept of using biomass as a carbon neutral fuel:  the EU Emissions Trading Scheme counts biomass as “carbon neutral” as do UK Building Regulations, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Resources Institute –  despite the recognition that this definition is problematic.[2]  Biomass burning is being ramped up all around the world in the name of green energy.

The concept of biomass as being carbon neutral is so popular that the European Union’s energy objectives for 2020 include the requirement that 20% of the total be from renewable sources, made up from biomass such as wood, waste and agricultural crops and residues.[3]  And the biomass industry in the US asked for an exemption from the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas regulations because, it claims, biomass is carbon neutral.  In January 2011, the EPA gave them a 3 year exemption.

This loophole gives oil companies, power plants and industries that face tighter pollution limits a cheap means to claim reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. According to a number of studies, applying this incentive globally could lead to the loss of most of the world’s natural forests as carbon caps tighten.  A very frightening scenario indeed, since deforestation is responsible for up to 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions – more than all cars, trains, planes, boats and trains in the world combined. [4]

I found a great blog post on this subject by Jeff Gibbs on Huffington Post Green, and I’ve relied on it for much of this post.  Here are just two of the issues:

Issue 1:  “Trees not harvested will eventually die and be decomposed by insects, fungi, bacteria, and other microorganisms which will release all the carbon dioxide that burning would. This cycling process has been going on for half a billion years, long before humans had a hand in it, and will continue with or without us.”

Here’s what Jeff Gibbs has to say:

• “Actually nature has plans for that dead tree. For one it’s food for the next generation of forest life. And it turns out trees are pretty good at transferring their CO2 to the soil rather than the atmosphere when they fall over dead. Underground roots of mushrooms called mycorrhiza digest the wood and keeps the carbon the trees had sucked from the air in the forest soil.   The proof? It’s called coal.  Millions of generations of plants and trees have taken in carbon from the air and deposited it as mountains of coal. It’s what trees and plants do. Because trees and plants took the CO2 out of the atmosphere we have the nice comfortable climate we enjoy today. It’s not their fault we’re releasing everything they worked so hard to lock away, and if we cut then down they are going to have that much more difficult of a time soaking the carbon back up.”

Issue 2:  “Carbon dioxide –  released by burning biomass – is carbon dioxide that was taken from the air as the trees grew, and the trees that replace the harvested biomass will grow by taking in carbon dioxide again.”

This is so fraught with different issues that we have to break it down into manageable segments to understand why this is not as simple as it seems:

1.   When you cut down a fully mature, multi-ton tree, how long do you think it will be before the one-ounce sapling that replaces it will be able to replicate the carbon uptake of the multi-ton tree?  Some trees take 100 years or more to mature.  When burned for energy, a mature tree (80-100 years old) takes minutes to release its full load of carbon into the atmosphere, but its replacement, if grown, takes a full century to re-sequester that carbon. For those 100 years, the CO2 is still aloft in the atmosphere helping push the climate toward the point of dangerous change, and yet carbon accounting rules treat it as non-existent.  After the initial release of carbon sequestered in a standing forest, a well-managed forest will start re-growing and at some point in time will achieve approximately the same concentration of carbon sequestration as the original forest.  But during that time, the atmospheric concentration of heat trapping gasses has been higher than it would otherwise have been, increasing associated environmental damages, and we have foregone the sequestration that would have happened in the original forest![5]
2.  Chopping down forests to burn for ethanol production — even if replanted as tree plantations — is like biting the hand that feeds you. “Natural forests, with their complex ecosystems, cannot be regrown like a crop of beans or lettuce,” reports the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group. “And tree plantations will never provide the clean water, storm buffers, wildlife habitat and other ecosystem services that natural forests do.”[6]
3.  Recent studies show that there is more biomass contained IN the soil than in what grows ON the soil above ground.   This soil carbon can be disturbed and released by harvesting and reforestation activities.[7]
4.  In a study published by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, it was found that burning  trees emits about 30% more carbon pollution than coal, which the report calls the “carbon debt” of biomass. [8]   According to the study,  under normal forest management   it takes over 21 years just to re-absorb the extra pollution that is released in the first year of burning the wood.    Also, the energy content of biomass is about 40% lower than that of regular fossil fuels, so you need to burn more of it to get the same power, which means more CO2. (to read more about this, click here.)
5.  It is simply not possible to plant sufficient numbers of trees to deal with the increased carbon dioxide emissions that are expected over the next half century.  According to Harpers Index, the number of years the United States could meet its energy needs by burning all its trees is … 1.
6.  Recent evidence suggests that global warming itself is stressing ecosystems and turning forests and forest soils into failing forests and, in the long run, into net sources of CO2. Thus, if we don’t curb our use of fossil fuels, it won’t matter how many trees we plant because these forests will be overcome and die as the climate continues to warm.[9]
7.  Old-growth forests are often replaced by tree-farm plantations that are heavily managed (including with chemicals and fossil fuel-intensive machinery) and do not offer the same biodiversity benefits as natural forests.
8.  Investment in forestry offsets does not contribute to reducing society’s dependence on fossil fuels, something that is ultimately needed to address climate change. Responding to climate change means fundamentally changing the way we produce and use energy.
9.  All biomass is not created equal.  According to Jeff Gibbs, some biomass plants burn old tires; others shovel in old houses and creosote soaked railroad ties. I don’t know what’s “bio” about all this but the energy you get is considered carbon neutral and renewable.

Here are Jeff Gibb’s seven truths that the Lorax would have us remember:

1. Saving our forests (and that doesn’t mean more tree plantations) is the best way to stop global warming and save humanity.
2. Deforestation is just as likely to result in the end of humanity as climate change and it’s right on track to do so.
3. Burning things is the most insane way to stop global warming since doctors drilled holes in skulls to let the demons out and gave you a bill for it.
4. There is no extra in nature and there is not enough “bio” on the planet to be burned, turned to ethanol, biodiesel or jet fuel, or bio-charcoal.
5. Woody biomass falsely deemed renewable energy increases the CO2 in the atmosphere, destroys forests, and prevents renewables from being fully explored.
6. Geo-engineering the forests, atmosphere or oceans to stop global warming isn’t going to work. We can’t even figure out how to stop carp from taking over a river or bugs from eating a forest.
7. There is a possibility that the only way to heal the planet is to get control of our own numbers and consumption while letting nature do the work she has done for three billion years: run the planet.

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[1] Grant, Nick and Clarke, Alan, “Biomass – a burning issue”, http://www.aecb.net/UserFiles/File/Biomass%20-%20A%20Burning%20Issue%20-%20published%20September%2020101.pdf

[2] Johnson, Eric, “Goodbye to carbon neutral:  Getting Biomass footprints right”, Atlantic Consulting, Gattikon, Switzerland, November 2008.

[3] Neslan, Arthur, Guardian Environment Network, April 2, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/02/eu-renewable-energy-target-biomass

[4] Greenpeace, “Solutions to Deforestation”;  http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/forests/solutions-to-deforestation/

[5] Natural Resrouces Defense Council comments with respect to draft Policy DAR-12, June 17, 2010.

[6] Scheer, Roddy and Moss, Doug, “EarthTalk”, E-The Environmental Magazine.  http://azdailysun.com/news/science/earthtalk-biomass-hardly-carbon-neutral/article_7111cb33-c27f-5e95-a5a7-133fc8b123db.html

[7] David Suzuki Foundation, “The problems with carbon offsets from tree-planting”, http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/science/the-problems-with-carbon-offsets-from-tree-planting/http://www.davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/science/the-problems-with-carbon-offsets-from-tree-planting/

[8] “Biomass Sustainability and Carbon Policy Study”, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, June 2010

[9] David Suzuki Foundation, Ibid.

What kind of wood is best for your new “green” sofa?

From last week’s post, I explained that most people who want to buy a “green” sofa look at two major components:  the wood and the foam.  But our blog post demonstrated how your fabric choice can trump the embodied energy of both these components – in other words, depending on which fiber you choose, fabric can be almost  triple  the embodied energy of wood and foam combined.  But embodied energy is a complicated concept,  and difficult to figure out without lots of time on your hands.  Our next steps will be to examine other issues associated with each of these choices – remember the ecosystem is a vast interconnected network, and we can’t pull any one component out and evaluate it out of context.   Each week we’ll look at one of the components  -  this week it’s wood.

Everybody knows that wood, a natural product, comes from trees,  but it’s important to know much more than whether the wood is cherry or mahagony – it’s also important to know that the wood did not come from an endangered forest (such as a tropical forest, or old growth boreal forests) – and preferably that the wood came from a forest that is sustainably managed.   Well managed forests provide clean water, homes for wildlife, and they help stabilize the climate. As the National Resources Defense Council says:

“Forests are more than a symbolic ideal of wilderness, more than quiet places to enjoy nature. Forest ecosystems — trees, soil, undergrowth, all living things in a forest — are critical to maintaining life on earth. Forests help us breathe by creating oxygen and filtering pollutants from the air, and help stabilize the global climate by absorbing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. They soak up rainfall like giant sponges, preventing floods and purifying water that we drink. They provide habitat for 90 percent of the plant and animal species that live on land, as well as homelands for many of the earth’s last remaining indigenous cultures. Forests are commercially important, too; they yield valuable resources like wood, rubber and medicinal plants, including plants used to create cancer drugs. Harvesting these resources provides employment for local communities.  Healthy forests are a critical part of the web of life. Protecting the earth’s remaining forest cover is now an urgent task.”

Unsustainable logging, agricultural expansion, and other practices threaten many forests’ existence.  Indeed, half of the Earth’s original forest cover has been lost, mostly in the last three decades.

According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), only 20% of Earth’s original forests remain today in areas large enough to maintain their full complement of biological and habitat diversity and ecological functions.[2]

More than 20% of  worldwide  carbon emissions come from the loss of forests[1], even after counting all the carbon captured by forest growth.  

A sustainable forest is a forest that is carefully managed so that as trees are felled they are replaced with seedlings that eventually grow into mature trees. This is a carefully and skilfully managed system. The forest is a working environment, producing wood products such as wood pulp for the paper / card industry and wood based materials for furniture manufacture and the construction industry. Great care is taken to ensure the safety of wildlife and to preserve the natural environment.

Forest certification is like organic labeling for forest products:  it is intended as a seal of approval — a means of notifying consumers that a wood or paper product comes from forests managed in accordance with strict environmental and social standards. For example, a person shopping for flooring or furniture would seek a certified forest product to be sure that the wood was harvested in a sustainable manner from a healthy forest, and not clearcut from a tropical rainforest or the ancestral homelands of forest-dependent indigenous people.

Choosing products from forests certified by the independent Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) can be an important part of using wood and paper more sustainably.  The FSC, based in Bonn, Germany,  brought together three seemingly antagonistic groups: environmentalists, industrialists and social activists. Its mission and governance reflects the balance between these original constituents in that FSC seeks to promote environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests. Each is given equal weight.   Formed in 1993, the FSC has established a set of international forest management standards; it also accredits and monitors certification organizations that evaluate on-the-ground compliance with these standards in forests around the world.  Today nearly 125 million acres of forest are FSC certified in 76 countries.

But not all certification programs are credible. Spurred by the success of the FSC and consumer demand for certified products, at least eight other forest certification programs have formed internationally, such as the American Tree Farm System (ATFS), the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) forest certification, and the European Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes (PEFC).  However, these programs are often backed by timber interests and set weak standards for forest management that allow destructive and business-as-usual forestry practices.

The most well known of these alternative certifications is the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).   Created in 1995 by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), an industry group, SFI was originally created  as a public relations program,  but it now represents itself as a certification system.

There are significant differences between the two systems.  FSC’s conservation standards tend to be more concrete, while SFI’s are vaguer targets with fewer measurable requirements. Here is what is allowed under the SFI standard:

• Allows large clearcuts
• Allows use of toxic chemicals
• Allows conversion of old-growth forests to tree plantations
• Allows use of genetically modified trees
• Allows logging close to rivers and streams that harms water supplies

By comparison,  the FSC:

• Establishes meaningful limits on large-scale clearcutting; harvesting rates and clearing sizes can not exceed a forest’s natural capacity to regenerate.
• Prohibits the most toxic chemicals and encourages forest practices that reduce chemical use.
• Does not allow the conversion of old-growth forests to tree plantations, and has guidelines for environmental management of existing plantations.
• Prohibits use of genetically modified trees and other genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
• Requires management and monitoring of natural forest attributes, including the water supply; for example,  springs and streams are monitored to detect any signs of pollutants or vegetative disturbance.
• Requires protection measures for rare old growth in certified forests, and consistently requires protection of other high conservation value forests.
• Prohibits replacement of forests by sprawl and other non-forest land uses.[4]

Certifiers also grant “chain-of-custody” certifications to companies that manufacture and sell products made out of certified wood. A chain-of-custody assessment tracks wood from the forest through milling and manufacturing to the point of sale. This annual assessment ensures that products sold as certified actually originate in certified forests.

Nearly a decade and a half after the establishment of these two certification bodies, there is a battle between FSC and SFI which is crescendoing in a showdown over recognition in the LEED system, the preeminent green building standard in the U.S.  Since its inception in 2000, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) has recognized only lumber with the FSC label as responsibly sourced. Up until now, credits such as MR 7 – Certified Wood, has awarded points based on the usage of FSC certified wood only (NOTE:  this is not specific to wood;  LEED  only awards points automatically  for Indoor Air Quality to products which are GreenGuard certified) .  Intense timber industry pressure has led the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED’s parent,  to evaluate the certified wood credit in LEED, which has been FSC exclusive since inception, and determine whether other certification systems, such as the industry-driven Sustainable Forestry Initiative, should be given credits as well.  As a result, the USGBC  is currently writing new rules about wood-product sourcing.

This would replace the simple FSC monopoly with generalized benchmarks for evaluating systems claiming to enforce sustainable forestry and open up considerations for other “green” wood labeling systems.

Opponents of this action feel that it opens the door to destructive forestry practices under the guise of “green” –  and  to pass off status-quo business practices as environmentally friendly.  One of the leading arguments for loosening the wood credit — and thus lowering the bar for the standards governing the origins of the wood — is that the FSC system doesn’t have enough supply to meet demand.  To which the rejoinder is that the volume of SFI wood speaks to laxness of standards.  SFI contends that since only 10% of the world’s forests are certified sustainable, the important fact to concern us should be to work on the problems plaguing the remaining 90%.

The battle is heating up:  it was reported as recently as the 22^nd of December, 2009, that a law suit was filed on behalf of a group calling itself the “Coalition for Fair Forest Certification” against the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) alleging unfair and deceptive trade practices.  It is believed that the Coalition members are also members of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.   (see http://greensource.construction.com/news/2009/091222Deception.asp )

We can only hope that USGBC’s certification decision takes place with keen regard to the organization’s guiding principles — high-minded values like “reconciling humanity with nature” and “fostering social equity.” It’s a critical decision that has the potential to help preserve forests by providing incentives for great management and cooling the planet down at the same time.

Once you’ve established whether the wood is from a sustainably managed forest, it’s also important to note whether the wood products in the sofa are composites.  Composites are typically made of wood and adhesive – examples of such composites are laminated veneer lumber (LVL), Medium density fiberboard (MDF), Plywood, and Glue Laminated Beams (Glulam).  Because these products are glued together using phenol formaldehyde resins, there is concern with formaldehyde emissions.  In fact, a bill  introduced in September, 2009, in the U.S.  Senate would limit the amount of allowable formaldehyde emissions in composite wood products.   In addition, the embodied energy in these products is typically higher than that for solid timber.  Based on a  study done by the    School of Engineering, University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom,
the embodied energy in air dried sawn hardwood (0.5 MJ/kg) is considerably less than that of glulam (4.6 to 11.0 MJ/kg)

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[1] Van der Werf, G.R, et al, “CO2 Emissions from Forest Loss”, Nature Geoscience, November 1, 2009, pp 737-38.

[2] “Guidelines for Avoiding Wood from Endangered Forests”, http://www.rainforestrelief.org/documents/Guidelines.pdf

[3] Examples of SFI certified companies’ harmful practices are at www.dontbuysfi.com.

[4] iGreenBuild.com:  Forest Certification:  Sustainable Forestry or Misleading Marketing?  http://credibleforestcertification.org/fileadmin/materials/old_growth/dont_buy_sfi/sfi_facts/2_-_Still_Not_Equal_igreenbuild.pdf

Embodied energy needed to make one sofa

I just read the article by Team Treehugger on Planet Green on what to look for if you’re interested in green furniture. And sure enough, they talked about the wood (certified sustainable – but without any  explanation about why Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood should be a conscientious consumers only choice), reclaimed materials, design for disassembly, something they call “low toxicity furniture”, buying vintage…the usual suspects.  Not once did they mention your fabric choice.

Of course, all these are important considerations and like most green choices, there are tradeoffs and degrees of green.  But if we look at the carbon footprint of an average upholstered sofa and see what kind of energy requirements are needed to produce that sofa, we can show you how your fabric choice is the most important choice you can make in terms of embodied energy.  Later on (next week’s post) we’ll take a look at what your choices mean in terms of toxicity and environmental degredation.

These are the components of a typical sofa:

• Wood
• Foam (most commonly) or other cushion filling
• Fabric
• Miscellaneous:
  • Glue
  • Varnish/paint
  • Metal springs
  • Thread
  • Jute webbing
  • Twine

1. WOOD: A 6 foot sofa uses about 32 board feet of lumber (1) .  For kiln dried maple, the embodied energy for 32 board feet is 278 MJ.  But if we’re looking at a less expensive sofa which uses glulam (a laminated lumber product), the embodied energy goes up to 403 MJ.
2. FOAM:  Assume 12 cubic feet of foam is used, with a density of 4 lbs. per cubic foot (this is considered a good weight for foam);  the total weight of the foam used is 48 lbs. The new buzz word for companies making upholstered furniture is “soy based foam” (an oxymoron which we’ll expose in next week’s post), which is touted to be “green” because (among other things)  it uses less energy to produce.  Based on Cargill Dow’s own web site for the BiOH polyol which is the basis for this new product, soy based foam uses up to 60% less energy than does conventional polyurethane foams.   Companies which advertise foam made with 20% soy based polyols  use 1888 MJ of energy to create 12 cubic feet of foam, versus 2027 MJ if conventional polyurethane was used.  For our purposes of comparison, we’ll use the lower energy amount of 1888 MJ and give the manufacturers the benefit of the doubt.
3. FABRIC:  Did you know that the decorative fabric you choose to upholster your couch is not the only fabric used in the construction?  Here’s the breakdown for fabric needed for one sofa:
   1. 25 yards of decorative fabric
   2. 20 yards of lining fabric
   3. 15 yards of burlap
   4. 10 yards of muslin

TOTAL amount of fabric needed for one sofa:  70 yards!

Using data from various sources (see footnotes below), the amount of energy needed to produce the fabric varies between 291 MJ (if all components were made of hemp, which has the lowest embodied energy) and 7598 MJ (if all components were made of  nylon, which has the highest embodied energy requirements).  If we choose the most commonly used fibers for each fabric component, the total energy used is 2712 MJ:

	fiber	Embodied energy in MJ
25 yards decorative fabric/ 22 oz lin. yd = 34.0 lbs	polyester	1953
20 yards lining fabric / 15 oz linear yard = 19 lbs	cotton	469
15 yards burlap / 10 oz linear yard = 9.4 lbs	hemp	41
10 yards muslin / 7 oz linear yard = 4.4 lbs	polyester	249
	TOTAL:	2712

I could not find any LCA studies which included the various items under “Miscellaneous” so for this example we are discounting that category.  It might very well impact results, so if anyone knows of a study which addresses these items please let us know!

So  we’re looking at three components (wood, foam and fabric), only two of which most people seem to think are important in terms of upholstered furniture manufacture.  But if we put the results in a table, it’s suddenly very clear that fabric is the most important consideration – at least in terms of embodied energy:

			Embodied energy in MJ
WOOD:	32 board feet, kiln dried maple		278
FOAM:	12 cubic feet, 20% bio-based polyol		1888
		SUBTOTAL wood and foam:	2166
FABRIC:		FIBER:
	25 yards uphl  fabric/ 22 oz lin. yd = 34.0 lbs	polyester	1953
	20 yards lining fabric / 15 oz linear yard = 19 lbs	cotton	469
	15 yards burlap / 10 oz linear yard = 9.4 lbs	hemp	41
	10 yards muslin / 7 oz linear yard = 4.4 lbs	polyester	249
		SUBTOTAL, fabric:	2712

If we were to use the most egregious fabric choices (nylon), the subtotal  for the energy used to create just the fabric would be 7598 MJ – more than three times the energy needed to produce the wood and foam!  This is just another instance where  fabric, a forgotten component,  makes a profound impact.

(1)  From: “Life Cycle Analysis of Wood Products: Cradle to Gate LCIof residential wood building material”, Wood and Fiber Science, 37 Corrim Special Issue, 2005, pp. 18 – 29.

(2)  Data for embodied energy in fabrics:

“Ecological Footprint and Water Analysis of Cotton, Hemp and Polyester”, Stockholm Environment Institute, 2005

Composites Design and Manufacture, School of Engineering, University of Plymouth UK, 2008, http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/sme/mats324/mats324A9%20NFETE.htm

Study: “LCA: New Zealand Merino Wool Total Energy Use”, Barber and Pellow.