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Right by H's school is a big hoarding around an empty site. I've never looked at it before but today the word 'Brasil' caught my eye. On closer inspection this plywood turns out to have been imported all the way from Brazil!

This got me thinking, as I had no idea that we might commonly import basic wood products from quite so far away, so I looked up the FSC certificate. Turns out that the wood is either Loblolly or Slash Pine, both fast growing trees introduced to many countries around the world from the SE of the USA. The certification should mean that the plantations are sustainably managed, but it all still raises a lot of questions in my head...