Sustainable plywood and how to find it

The UK is flooded with illegal and unsustainable plywood made from tropical hardwood from the world's last remaining ancient forests, commonly used on construction sites. With this in mind, we have released a new report Setting A New Standard, which provides practical advice to companies on how to get it right on timber, by specifying wood that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

The construction industry is by far the largest consumer of timber products in the UK, so they have a vitally important role to play in ensuring that their timber use does not contribute to the devastation of rainforests around the world.

The report shows that there is no technical reason why unsustainable plywood cannot be replaced by FSC-certified Oriented Strand Board (OSB) which is competitively priced, locally sourced and already available on the UK market. We have compiled a checklist to help construction projects use as much environmentally and socially responsible timber as possible.

While this report focuses on the timber used by the UK construction it is vital that politicians also act, to stop the import of timber that comes from illegal logging. Currently the EU has no laws to stop illegal timber and we are campaigning for EU wide legislation to address this as a matter of urgency.

See the plywood checklist for a summary of the recommendations and an explanation of the terminology used. Getting it right on timber is becoming much easier, but the impacts of getting it wrong are devastating for the world's forests.