South Cone leads eco tours
By Powell Slaughter -- Furniture Today, October 16, 2004
At the Market — South Cone Trading Co. has shown several retailers how to manage rainforest resources, up close and personal.
The Peruvian case goods and occasional manufacturer has worked for years to find new wood species for furniture and help indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest understand and benefit from the economic value of the wood resources around them.
This summer, the high-end company took several retailers on tours deep into the rainforest where South Cone sources much of its wood.
Jim Gabbert of Gabberts in Minneapolis and his daughter Julia went on a 10-day tour. Others taking the tour were John Billington of Five Rivers in Boise, Idaho; Chris Bryant of Urban Home and Domestic Bliss in Dallas; and John Wells, South Cone's representative in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
The group got a first-hand look at progress being made by South Cone's Partnerships and Technology for Sustainability program. The program aims to help indigenous people improve their lives by helping sustain the wood resources of the rainforest, as well as develop native craft skills to create products for sale.
Several eco-tour participants described the experience as "life changing." What impressed them most was the human element.
"We got to spend so much time with the indigenous people — we slept in their front yards, drank beer with them," Bryant said. "This one man about my age — he's concerned about his kids, their education, their future, the same things I worry about."
Tour participants got an eyewitness look of what drives rainforest depletion and how it can be prevented.
"The reason why the rainforest is burning away is so the indigenous people can feed themselves," Bryant said. "That was such an incredible revelation."
With little economic opportunity, indigenous people face the choice of starving or cutting timber to survive. The PaTS program aims to help those people realize other economic benefit from the forest, and to develop skills that provide alternatives.
Billington said that through PaTS, South Cone President Gerry Cooklin, a native of Peru, "has brought an idea and meaning to these forests that shows these people the importance of what they own and what it means around the world. Without PaTS, they'd never hear those words. The only thing they've heard is loggers wanting to buy the timber for pennies."
The tour left both men committed to helping South Cone develop products in new wood species to add value to the forest.
"My trip to the Amazon reinforced and empowered my feelings toward renewable forestry," Billington said. "We as a company will fully support the PaTS program in our marketplace. I would encourage anyone who has the inclination or opportunity to jump at the chance to take this trip."
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