Where does your wood come from?

Forest campaigner Belinda Fletcher said that they had written to each site asking them for details of the timber being used on the project.

Greenpeace wants all lottery projects to specify legal and sustainable timber. Central Government, which uses 15% of timber in the UK, made this mandatory on its projects in 2000. But this isn’t the case for the rest of the public sector, which uses a further 25% of all timber in the UK.

The Merbau timber flooring being used on the £25.5m Kelingrove refurbishment had come from the rainforests of South East Asia, where orang-utans and other species are threatened with extinction due to the timber trade. Fletcher said that as a result of the Greenpeace action, which saw protestors enter the site, remove packs of timber and replace them with FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)-approved timber, HBG and Glasgow City Council - which is part-funding the project - agreed to suspend the flooring contractor. They are now working with Greenpeace to make sure they used FSC-approved wood.

Contractors who want to make sure their timber is legal and sustainable should insist on FSC-approved sources as this is the only mark recognised by all the environmental
bodies as reliable.

The other sites Greenpeace are targeting are Arnolfini, Bristol, Town Hall, Birmingham, The Deep, Hull, City and County Museum, Lincoln, National Centre for Childrens Books, Newcastle, National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, The Public, West Bromwich, St Georges Hall, Liverpool, Shoreditch Town Hall and Wembley Stadium.