Article Title: Eco-Teak: A Big Fat Lie
Author: Akhter Rasool
Word Count: 548
Homepage: http://www.shaantrading.com
Author's Email Address: triconville[at]yahoo.com (replace
[at] with @)
Summary: Teak furniture is the first priority for any outdoor living.
This article provides some insight into teak outdoor furniture and some
facts about eco-teak.
Keywords: teak outdoor furniture, teak garden furniture, patio wicker
furniture.

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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.


About The Author: Akhter Rasool operates website at
http://www.shaantrading.com
Check company's teak outdoor furniture of traditional and contemporary
designs at
http://www.shaantrading.com/triconville.php

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