Opanpan Door Skins
As a species, we seem to always be on the lookout for something new — always seeking improvements. Movies get remade. The iPhone is reincarnated twice a year. But some things don’t need to change. The wheel hasn’t undergone any major innovations, for example. We still haven’t found something that makes forks obsolete. And when it comes to building materials, even though there’s plenty of concrete, brick, fiberglass, carbon fiber, titanium, and various other options, we still just love wood.
Timber is timeless. While we inch further and further away from our natural origins and into a curated, technologically governed existence, wood is there to ground us. It reminds us of our roots. It’s one of the oldest building materials we ever used, with trees probably serving as our ancestors’ first form of shelter. It’s beautiful. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to go out of style, especially with the price of wood generally going up over time. What is changing, however, is how we understand the environmental impact of timber harvesting and the ways we, as consumers, can choose sustainable harvesting over harmful harvesting.
Wood may be a renewable resource, but even renewable resources can be outpaced by intense demand. We’re not quite at the level of real demand being higher than real supply, but we have historically treated the harvesting of timber with little forethought. It’s easy to see why — they grow back. Theoretically, we are able to consume as much wood as we need while planting new trees to take the place of those that were felled. In practice, of course, we’ve been rather wasteful. With the rainforest’s health increasingly in jeopardy, and deforestation coming into the spotlight as a major global issue, manufacturers and consumers alike are justifiably cautious.
ETO’s Commitment and Certifications
In 2009 ETO Doors became one of only a few U.S. door companies certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®, or FSC®. The Forest Stewardship Council is a global nonprofit organization whose mission is the regulation of sustainability standards in the world’s timber forests. The FSC is a non-governmental entity, but it is widely respected all over the world, and its certifications are not earned lightly. We’re just as proud of our FSC certifications as we are of our doors. Be sure to ask about our products with FSC sustainability certifications. These certifications can usually be found as physical seals on the products themselves, and carry information regarding the species and origin of the wood used. Per their official website, the FSC recognizes five categories of unacceptable wood sources:
- Illegally harvested wood
- Wood harvested in violation of traditional and human rights
- Wood harvested in forests in which high conservation values are threatened by management activities
- Wood harvested in forests being converted to plantations or non-forest use
- Wood from forests in which genetically-modified trees are planted