WHAT’S THE DAMAGE?

Are guitars a problem or solution? The answer is not so clear cut…

“How much rosewood does the industry use?” says Scott Paul who campaigned on forests with Greenpeace before joining Taylor Guitars as sustainability lead.“I went everywhere trying to answer these questions and the data really doesn’t exist. If you look at global data in the forest product trade, it’s not very sophisticated and there’s a lot of holes.”

Crude estimates, though, say the volume of wood that guitars take is a tiny splinter of global use – some say far less than one 10th of one per cent. But splinters can be a pain. Tonewoods can influence what we do to forests in ways that go beyond volume: hordes of pulp-grade trees can be cleared to reach a few hundred music-grade Sitka. Even careful selective harvesting can affect complex ecologies – sometimes in ways we don’t yet understand.

But, to stretch the metaphor, splinters also get under your skin. Which is why some guitar makers think the industry could show some leadership on the environment. People have a powerful attachment to guitars. “Everything we can do is a drop in the ocean, except for one thing – that’s get the story out,” says Bob Taylor. “As a guitar company, we punch above our weight because people are so interested in guitars, so we try to do demonstration projects. As an industry, we need to take our ethical responsibilities seriously, and I think by and large we do, although some companies and some countries are farther along the path than others.

“We also have to accept that the guitar has become a high-profile cultural totem representing global wood use,”Taylor continues.“The guitar industry can no longer be passive observers.We can be part of the problem or part of the solution and help to educate policy makers as to the often unintended consequences of their decisions. And, for sure, we need to use our power to support proper forest management and forest restoration.”