JAPAN: Consumers of Furniture Rapidly Depleting Asiatic Forests

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jan 27 1996 (IPS) - Much of the timber taken from Asia’s shrinking rainforests is made into furniture for the Japanese market, but many of the wooden tables, chairs and shelves end up in the garbage dump after only a few years of use.

Research by the Sarawak Conservation Campaign (SCC), a grassroots environmental organisation, has revealed that such wasteful consumption patterns in Japan are a major cause of the depletion of the region’s tropical jungles.

“Our survey, conducted in 1994, has shown that the Japanese throw away large volumes of furniture that have been made from tropical timber imported from developing countries,” says SCC head Kazuko Matsue.

According to the group’s survey, 23.9 per cent of imported hardwood and softwood is used by furniture makers. And cheap wooden furniture such as tables and dressers comprise almost 60 per cent of the burnable trash collected by city authorities here.

“These findings prove that the Japanese buy and discard their furniture easily because the products are so cheap. This wasteful pattern devastates precious forests in other countries,” says Matsue.

Discarding bulky possessions is common in big cities where families move, on an average, once every eight years. Matsue discovered that during each move people choose to throw away most of their large furniture to save on moving costs.

“It is cheaper to buy new furniture than to pay the movers. Japan’s prohibitive labour costs also make it more economical to throw away damaged pieces than pay for repairs,” she said.

Matsue’s environmental group was set up to protect the fast disappearing rainforests in the eastern Malaysian state of Sarawak, one of the world’s biggest producers of tropical timber.

More than 80 per cent of the tropical wood from Sarawak was exported to the Japanese market, which expanded rapidly in the 1980s.

The economic slump and increasing criticism from environmental groups have forced Japan to cut down its timber exports from South- east Asia. But Japan remains heavily dependent on cheaper foreign wood, making the nation the world’s largest timber importer.

More than 70 per cent of the wood consumed by the Japanese is imported from South-east Asia, the South Pacific, North America and Russia.

Despite a decline in timber exports from the Asia-Pacific in recent years, the region remains a major supplier of tropical timber for the Japanese market.