Items to Avoid:Plywood | Dowels | Rayon | Palm Oil | Hardwoods | Primate Pets | What You Can Do “Let us remember, always, that we are the consumers. By exercising free choice, by choosing what to buy, what not to buy, we have the power, collectively to change the ethics of business of industry. We have the potential to exert immense power for good–we each carry it with us, in our purses, checkbooks, and credit cards.” — w, A Reason for Hope Indonesia lost almost 100 million acres of rainforest during the rampant plunder of forests that occurred during former president Suharto’s 32-year reign. After Suharto was toppled in 1998, illegal logging grew even faster, as powerful regional timber barons took advantage of a political vacuum to exploit endangered resources. The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) based in London and Washington, estimates that at the current rate of deforestation in Indonesia, lowland forests will disappear from Sumatra by 2005, and from Kalimantan in Indonesian Borneo by 2010. Many items sold today originating from Indonesia are made from materials that come from these vanishing rainforests or are related to the endangered species that are fast disappearing from these forests. As you shop, you can avoid these items by asking yourself:
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