“ecoSelect” eco-selection or eco-deception
This deceptive new brand invented by a desperate old industry is claiming environmentally friendly credentials while still clearfelling.
Part of the eco-Select propaganda shows a dainty cello player singing a forest to sleep. But next morning the loggers come along and wipe it off the face of the earth (that’s the bit they don’t show). Or a glamorous woman adjusting her jewellery on a bedroom suite with a backdrop of a beautiful forest – before it was logged for a few trees that might have made it to a sawmill, let alone a carpentry workshop.
Growing public outrage over forest destruction has seen the logging industry, desperate for public approval. So it created its own green tick. The label is designed only to mislead the public, not to improve standards of logging in native forests.
They think it’s much simpler to rely on people’s gullibility rather than clean up logging practices or move to plantation wood. Out there, it’s business as usual on the bulldozers. There is not one environmentally sensitive commercial logging operation anywhere in the state.
The advertising campaign uses existing government regulations to claim the forests have been nicely clearfelled and we know what government regulations allow!
Neville Smith Timber Industries (NSTI), one of the pushes of this new campaign, received $1 million public money as an industry assistance grant last year. After this, they were helicoptering politicians and journalists over the tree tops to show them how well everything was being done down there.
EcoSelect is another deceptive plot of a highly destructive industry desperate to find favour with the public. So don’t be duped.