Feel good that the world’s three biggest buyers of lumber — Home Depot, Lowe’s, and IKEA — have promised to give preference to wood that meets eco-friendly certification standards. But feel un-good that very little such wood exists. Only about 200 patches of certified forests now exist across the globe. Rod Taylor of the World Wildlife Fund in Asia said, “If Home Depot came on board tomorrow, they’d exhaust the global supply of certified wood in about a day.” Even if certification takes off, some environmentalists say it will only be a band-aid solution to the real problem: overconsumption.
