If you want to find a great way to furnish your home beautifully and with minimum environmental impact, one of the ways to do this is to look for sustainably produced wicker furniture. Wicker comes from the rattan plant, a plant, related to the palm trees of Indonesia and Asia. It grows rapidly among the ancient rain-forest, rather like a vine. There are many different types of rattan in the Asian rain-forests.
It is an incredibly strong material and is used for housing as well as furniture and grows rapidly, much faster than tree in the rain-forest. Rattan has been harvested traditionally for many many generations. Once harvested the outer bark is stripped and used for weaving rattan products. The inner core is treated by boiling in oil to protect it from humidity and insects. It is then worked into pieces of furniture by local workers. Wicker is extremely strong because of the character of the grain which grows straight as opposed to the concentric circles of most other woods. It is also very strong because it is flexible. It can be steamed and bent into different shapes, which makes it a great material for creating furniture with.
It’s strength and the fact that it can grow so quickly make it an obvious choice for industry. I addition,the fact that it is a simple material to work with but also very labor intensive means that rattan and wicker furniture is a great way to provide sustainable employment to the people of the area.
The versatility and lightness of wicker furniture lends itself to many different styles and uses in the home. Strong as it is , wicker bedroom furniture can be relied upon to be supportive as well as stylish. With special treatment, wicker outdoor furniture is a very popular use of this marvellous material.
But one of the most exciting things about rattan is that whatever you, like to use it for, whether you want wicker patio furniture or bedroom furniture, it actively protects the environment in which it grows. Rattan is a vine that needs the structures that surround it in order to survive, so the rainforest is protected as a growing medium for this marvellous plant.
But take care to buy the sustainable wicker furniture. Until recently, processes used to preserve rattan have polluted the environment. Only lately have the old, safe methods been reintroduced. Make sure you know what to buy and visit the WWF website www.wwf.panda.org for more information