A few days ago, I sent an email to Urbain Designs, a manufacturer/wholesaler of benches and outdoor amenities for municipalities, based in Montreal, Canada.

Urbain supplies recycled plastic lumber benches to a company called GreenCulture, that markets environmentally-preferable furniture on a website called Eco-Furniture.com.

We were checking into Urbain to see whether they'd be alright to put on our new web site and found that they were also selling ipe and jatoba outdoor furniture. Not good.

I emailed Urbain and to our delight, got a message a few days later that stated that they are scrapping their lines of ipe and jatoba in their new catalog, just going to print, so as of two weeks from now, will no longer sell them to new clients. The way the message put it was "to help us out".

We'll be going 'live' with our new web site within two weeks and will have an address for Urbain so you can send a 'thank you'. We'll be announcing the new site when it's live.

You never know what one phone call or email can do. But we can't be the only ones doing it if we're to substantially slow rainforest wood use and imports. But with all of you doing it as wellŠ

Do a web search on ipe and benches, or jatoba and flooring, or ramin and futon, or any number of woods and products, and then send an email or use the phone. If you hit a wall or get a bite, let us know.

For Earth,
tim keating

--

"The earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land and the
measure of our bodies are the same..."
-- Hinmaton Yalatkit, Nez Perce chief
____________________________________________

R A I N F O R E S T R E L I E F

Sparing the World's Rainforests from Consumption

Rainforest Relief works to protect the world's remaining tropical
and temperate rainforests by reducing the demand for the products
and materials of rainforest destruction such as timber and paper,
industrial agricultural products such as bananas, beef, coffee,
chocolate and cut flowers, and mining products
such as oil, gold and aluminum.

Brooklyn, NY: phone/fax: (718) 398-3760
Portland, OR: (503) 236-3031
Email: relief@igc.org
http://www.rainforestrelief.org
P.O. 150566 * Brooklyn, NY 11215 USA

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