On a remote Sumbawa coast, old fishing boats lie beached like the great fish they once pursued. For over half a century these wooden craft plied the archipelago, their coats of sun-bleached green, blue and yellow paint bright against the sapphire seas. Now their time is over; their owners have died or moved on to captain more modern ships. The old boats lie slumbering in the sand as their paint fades under the tropical sun.
Then one day an enterprising Balinese saw the abandoned craft and realized that they were completely constructed from tropical hardwood, an increasingly precious resource. Wijaya Ketut purchased his first boat from Sumbawa three years ago and painstaking dismantled it on the beach, pulling out the nails by hand. Shipping the wood to Bali, he built a workshop where he began to create furniture from the kiln-dried wood.
The concept proved so popular that Ketut has returned twice more to purchase old boats. His unpretentious showroom in Singapadu displays appealing, well-crafted chairs, benches, cabinets and other furniture, often featuring the original painted surfaces. Ketut works with the shape of each length of wood –- keels, decking, prows -– so each piece of furniture is unique. Once you learn the story of the wood, the strong colours seem to evoke the energy of ships themselves. Not all the pieces retain the original paint. Some of the furniture has been sanded down to the seasoned gleam of natural wood.
“There’s a big interest in recycled wood now, especially from Europe,” Pak Ketut explains. “About 30% of our products are exported and the balance is sold locally to villas and other developments.” Ketut’s company, WK Concept, supplied all the furniture, wall panels and cement floor tiles to the recently opened Mozzarella Restaurant in Kuta. The new business features the colourful recycled wood concept on its publicity materials. Biku, a popular new restaurant on Jalan Petitenget, also features and sells Pak Ketut’s furniture.
What inspired him to work with wood? “I love trees,” he confides. “I’ve planted many trees in my village to achieve a balance with the wood I use in production.” Ketut’s business is not only a sterling example of recycling scarce resources, it has created sustainable employment for 40 people. He shakes my hand warmly as I leave the showroom. “We have the same hobby,” he grins. “We both want to make a greener world.”
Much of Indonesia’s nautical history is connected with wood. Besides boats, many wharves, jetties, boardwalks and marine warehouses of the archipelago’s many ports were constructed from Borneo ironwood (ulin). As they are gradually being replaced with cement, entrepreneurs and builders are buying up the now-valuable old timber.
Ubud-based environmentalist Yoga Sofyar was planning to build a house for his family last year when he realized that the recycled wood he needed was not available in Bali. “I wanted the house to be as environmentally-friendly as possible,” he explains. “The specs called for 100% recycled hardwood for the posts, beams, frames, joists, roofing and flooring. I decided to bring it in from Kalimantan.”
With his background of 15 years in community-based forest management in Kalimantan, Yoga was familiar with the wood situation there and the government program to replace wooden jetties around the country with concrete. His sister consolidated the first shipment of wood from various sources and Yoga brought it into Bali. Now that he has the wood he needs for his own house, he continues to import it for others and finds there’s a good market for it. The transportation and permits to bring the wood into Bali are expensive, so he concentrates on bringing in the best quality under his company Kalimantan Recycled Timber.
Kalimantan Recycled Timber can provide wood for flooring, decking, structure, framing, furniture and cabinetry. These Kalimantan hardwoods are at least 30 years old and termite-resistant -– ideal for building in the tropics. The timber can be purchased as is or milled to uniform width and thickness. An onsite partner can install the timber as a made-to-measure deck.
“We didn’t cut down a single tree for our house, and there are plenty of other people out there who feel the same,” he states. “Recycled wood is not for everyone; it’s a challenge to work with. It is hard to source, isn’t uniform in size, has a rustic look and you have to work around the faults. But incorporating recycled wood gives you a home full of warmth and character, and the knowledge that you’ve done the right thing.”
But it’s getting harder all the time to do the right thing. Sherri Dean used the wood from a wrecked wooden boat to build her own house in Bali, and five years ago went into the business of supplying recycled marine timber to others. Her company, Earthwise Recycled Timber, is now seeking other alternatives as the price of recycled hardwood continues to increase. “The market is much more difficult now because the demand is so high,” she explains. “In the past five years the price of a cubic meter of recycled ironwood has at least tripled. It can be even higher than the price of new wood. We’re looking at renewable alternatives now, like bamboo and 100 year old treated coconut wood from Sulawesi.”
An ethical builder seeking ethical wood faces many challenges. Much of the new wood on the Indonesian market is illegally logged from protected forests. International pressure is growing stronger for buyers to demand certified timber, but this issue is by no means straightforward in Indonesia. The Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC), an international NGO, accredits certification bodies which then use FSC standards to certify the forest management of the timber company, or provide a chain of custody for the timber coming from the certified forest and for reclaimed wood. This system is generally recognized by the rest of the world, but the situation in Indonesia is very complicated. Even the formal definition of ‘legal logging’ in this country has not been resolved. An independent study carried out in 2002 uncovered the startling fact that as little as 10% of the area considered to be ‘State Forests Land’ have been properly zoned, delineated and gazetted as such, making nearly all forestry concessions in Indonesia technically illegal.
FSC certification in Indonesia is severely hampered by the fact that FSC has only four members in the country and an initiative to agree on national certification standards has not even started. In the absence of clear legal mechanisms for recognizing customary rights or fair means for securing indigenous peoples’ agreement to forestry operations on customary lands, the study argued that FSC certification should remain suspended until there was a broad and inclusive national agreement about what standards should be applied in the circumstances. It’s very unclear when this may come about.
The definition of legal timber continued to be cloudy right up until the time of the Bali Climate Change Conference, which decided to forge ahead with the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) scheme. It’s hoped that the REDD scheme will reduce illegal logging, reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere and increase the livelihoods of forest-dependent communities. REDD pilot projects have already begun in Aceh and East Kalimantan. There are many pros and cons of REDD, but it is hoped the scheme will bring about positive results for Indonesia’s forests.
One FSC-certified provider in Bali is Tag Tag Reclaimed Woods. They carry a large stock of reclaimed woods suitable for all building and interior needs at their woodlot and production facility in Seminyak, much of it from old docks, boardwalks, warehouses and bridges. They also offer custom-designed post and beam houses, furniture, home renovations and design consultations.
Although the other recycled wood suppliers in this story are not yet certified, they all personally source their own wood.
Recycled ironwood is among the most popular building options. Borneo ironwood/ulin (Eusideroxylon zwageri) grows and regenerates so slowly that it could be called a non-renewable resource. “Because the growth cycle is so slow, no one has lived long enough to monitor a tree to maturity and there is no reliable traditional knowledge about its growth,” says Drh I Gede Bayu Wirayudha, Director of the Friends of the National Parks Foundation.“We do know that the seed can take years to germinate in nature, and that after the first year or two the tree grows very slowly, about two millimeters a year.” That means a dressed 20 x 20 cm ironwood beam is cut from a tree that was at least 300 years old.
In the logged-out and burned Central Kalimantan forest where Bayu manages a reforestation project, only the blackened skeletons of ironwood trees stand in what are now grassy plains. He points to a picture of a stump about a metre and half in diameter and I do the arithmetic. If indeed the ironwood grows at two millimeters a year throughout its life, that tree would have been 750 years old. It was sawn off a meter from the ground.
Needless to say, no one is planting ironwood plantations. But Bayu’s forestry team has developed a technique that encourages the seeds to germinate in only three months. He’s brought back some seeds from Kalimantan and will plant the saplings on Nusa Penida. What the heck.
Meanwhile, back to the beach. It’s hard to imagine a better win-win situation than turning old boats and jetties into trendy furniture and floors. And there’s something rather magical about old wood that still carries the memory of enchanted journeys through Indonesia’s tropical seas.
Contact details:
Ketut of WK Concept wijayanice@yahoo.com
Yoga of Kalimantan Recycled Timber yogsof@gmail.com
Sherri of Earthwise Recycled Timber info@earthwisebali.com
David of Tag Tag Recycled Woods tagtaggallery@yahoo.com
Bayu of Friends of the National Forests Foundation pkaler@dps.centrin.net.id
’Dragons in the Bath’, a collection of Ibu Kat’s stories,
is now available in paperback from
* Kuta : The Bali Advertiser office
* Seminyak : Ganesha at Biku
* Ubud : Ganesha Books, KAFE, Threads of Life, Eve Body Treatment Centres
* Sanur : Dijon
