Official Luthiers Forum!

I found this interesting...

http://www.fsc-watch.org/archives/2011/ ... tars_fiasc

"The case has also served to cast a spotlight on Gibson's financial relationship with the international watchdog group that accredits its wood supplies as legitimate to ship after they're harvested.

The group -- the Rainforest Alliance -- has consistently given Gibson high marks for environmental practices in the form of the widely recognized Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) stamp of approval for its wood imports.

The FSC serves as a sort of Good Housekeeping stamp of approval, issued to companies and forest managers that are found to meet a set of forest management standards. Absent any formal national and international legal standards, the FSC stamp is widely regarded as among the best independent assessments of a company's environmental practices.

Less widely known is Gibson's longtime practice of making large contributions to the alliance.

While the Rainforest Alliance has regularly investigated and audited Gibson, it also has been among the biggest recipients of the Gibson company's charitable efforts, receiving between $315,000 and $390,000 each year since 2006 in cash and donations of expensive guitars for the charity's annual gala dinner, according to a Tennessean review of tax records.
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Thanks for posting this, John. Sounds like one more twist in a pretty twisted mess. So you've got the industries that use the wood, and various groups and government agencies that monitor those industries, and other groups that monitor the monitoring groups, and the industries themselves are bribing (oops, I mean "making contributions") to some if not all of the groups, as well as bribing (oops, I mean lobbying) the people who make the laws that regulate the industries, and the wood producers are "lobbying" and "making contributions" too. I suggest that we form a group to monitor the groups that monitor the groups that... I wonder how many contributions we could exact.

You can't trust ANYONE!

I think it's fair to say that in the eyes of some, corporations like Gibson are "evil" no matter what they do or don't do.

Thanks for posting the link jd.

I figured the situation would get weirder before it's all settled.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Having jumped all the hoops and gone through all the crap to get a cabinet shop "Green Certified" with all the appropriate groups, alliances and councils a few years ago I can tell you one thing. Most of these certifications don't mean diddly. Seriously, conversion varnish is technically "green" if I hold it for 28 days to completely out-gas before sending out the product. Just the same as waterbourne finish at that point, so all those nasty chemicals didn't actually count as long as a certified user was the one using them, no matter that they still go out into the atmosphere.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

It does seem like many environmental regulations (though well-intentioned, I'm sure) really don't accomplish much toward their intended purpose. They sure do cost a lot though...on multiple levels.