Teak Alert

As a caring consumer, you have a choice when you shop for teak. We hope you’ll use your purchasing power to buy only responsibly grown and harvested teak that’s produced with respect for the environment and humankind.

Unfortunately, as with a number of other precious resources from gold to diamonds and oil, valued hardwoods, including teak, makes easy prey for exploitation.

Wrongfully produced or harvested timber around the globe has been found to be funding some of the world’s most repressive regimes, brutal wars, and illegal arms trade, including in Myanmar/Burma, Liberia and Thailand. There are unscrupulous logging companies, governments and rebel groups appropriating timber operations to support weapons imports and fuel conflict. “Cut and run” logging is a major cause of forest degradation around the globe. It imperils biodiversity and devalues the livelihoods and lifestyles of dependent communities. What’s more, the destruction of tropical forests, usually including by fire, throws hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, increasing the damaging effects of global warming.

Reforest Teak is a transparent, and sustainable forest management enterprise that values local natural resources.We are committed to long-term economic and social development in local communities. Our restorative forest management practices are certifiedby the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), through our reforestation and manufacturing partner Diamond Teak, assuring that forests, and their dependent communities, are protected.

We think you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for at Reforest Teak. But if you plan to shop elsewhere for teak products, be sure to look for transparency in the supply chain, the milling and the value-added processing of the wood. And ask questions that will help you to understand the social and environmental consequences of your purchase.

There’s helpful and plentiful information on the subject of illegal and conflict teak online. We’ve provided a few resources to help find your way through the forest.