Time to stand taller
By: David Venables in Environment
"time to stand taller"; I am not actually referring to trees but it could easily be a sentiment that sums up American hardwood forests as they keep growing and expanding.
What I really mean is, it is now the time for hardwood marketeers to step out of the shadows, stand taller and take on the critics with a more positive environmental message. It’s time to challenge perceptions, change views, and shout a lot louder about a renewable material that's part of the solution to climate change and not the problem!
So with this in mind and the latest AHEC advertising campaign it makes it clear that wood as well as trees "keep carbon out of the atmosphere naturally". But, potentially the most controversial of the adverts, features an American hardwood tree being selectively felled with the caption “Seed.Saw.Seed.Saw.Seed.Saw… - working with natures rhythm”. In the past such images have been used to discredit the activities of the wood sector, but times have changed and markets now realise that deforestation is associated with high risk areas such as tropical forests. AHEC have adopted this controversial approach to highlight the fact that hardwood fibre is expanding in U.S. forests and that good management both protects these forests and provides valuable wood resources for global consumption. Ten years ago we wouldn't have even considered this approach, five years ago we wouldn't have had the nerve, but today it feels absolutely the right thing to do.