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AELLON's Grace: Sustainable Furniture from Uhuru and a 61-Foot Fishing Boat
First, we did not bring the wood from Indonesia to New York. That part of the article was not correct. The story is a bit complicated though, so we don't expect everyone to get it right.
We do, however, manufacture Aellon products in an environmentally and socially responsible workshop in a traditional carving village in Indonesia. This village is in same town where we found the boat, so the wood didn't have to travel too far.
Unfortunately, Indonesia has a significant amount of deforestation taking place, which is due to companies not caring where they source their wood. In addition to utilizing reclaimed materials, we are involved with on-the-ground programs through the Indonesian non-profit Trees4Trees (www.trees4trees.org) which works with tree formers to support the reforestation of this beautiful, but poor country.
Regarding your point about carbon: Using reclaimed materials, particularly those that honor two globally threatened wood species, has a significantly smaller carbon footprint then removing trees (even sustainably harvested trees) from the ground. Check out this article in Nature Magazine for more information: http://www.nature.org/ourscience/sciencefeatures/ask-the-conservationist-march-2011-save-a-tree-save-how-much-co2.xml
Finally, sustainability is about more than just carbon. It requires life cycle thinking (i.e. how long will our product last, 10 or 200 years? Then what?). We believe that a truly sustainable product is designed with every environmental and social impact in mind.
Thanks for your comment.
Daniel
No matter the source of the wood, it's hard to believe that a line of furniture requiring about 300kg of material for just one living could be proclaimed as sustainable...