ECO-TEAK: A Big Fat Lie

In past few years the interest for green home products has increased. Getting teak furniture from environmentally responsible companies has become one of the factors when purchasing teak furniture. Teak furniture has been very much highlighted from last couple of years because of a) High price of teakwood b) Habitat: Teak comes from plantations and natural forests. c) Different Grades of Wood.

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of need to sustain natural forests and like to share the same responsibility of sustaining the natural resources as producers. They want to make sure that the teak furniture they are about to purchase comes from sustainable resource.

Keeping to the above trend and response towards consumer demands some companies have taken steps to control effectively their raw materials but there are some who are just trying to capitalize on this trend and claming everything they can invent to sell their furniture to such customers even at higher prices than standard market price. Some companies have even created some kind of FUNNY LABELS and post them on their marketing material to show that their wood is certified from some valid source. And there are some who claim that their teak is ECOTEAK (whatever that means!!!). The truth about ECOTEAK: ECOTEAK is the name given to lower quality teak. Products of this quality has higher content of sapwood which influences the strength and the lifetime of the products. Such manufacturers claim that they are doing so to preserve the natural forests. They just forget that the sapwood is found mostly in young trees. And when they are making products having a lot of sapwood simply means that the trees used in the production were young. I just don’t understand how come by cutting the young trees they can preserve the natural forest. To make things worse the products of ECOTEAK has to undergo the process of color homogenization. If not so done, the products would simply look ugly. Color homogenization is the process whereby the products are sprayed by sulphuric acid. In this process the white color sapwood turns to light yellowish in color which is the color of good quality teak as well. This weakens the products even further.

I think Ecoteak is “A BIG FAT LIE”

The consumers should know that this lower quality teak is dangerous for our forests as the young trees are cut illegally to make fast money and this ecoteak is sold on the name of treated teakwood. There is nothing like treatment of teak as the quality teak does not need any treatment. It is done to confuse the consumers who don’t know much about the teakwood.

The challenge is how do we counter this kind of lies. It is the responsibility of resellers and marketers of teak furniture to provide the right products to their customers. We do not expect a consumer to know everything about teakwood, its grades and other stuff. All they want is a quality product and that is their intention while making a purchase. So, if a reseller sources his/her product from the right manufacturer the consumer is guaranteed to get the value for money. The key is not to market and sell this type of furniture which is just to make money on the expense of unsatisfied end consumer.

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