Further Questions Raised About Lumber Liquidators Sourcing Practices

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Following demonstrations at a supplier export facility in Brazil last week, activists staged a protest during Lumber Liquidators’ shareholder meeting today at their Toano, Virginia headquarters. The United States’ largest flooring retailer has again come under fire after a Greenpeace investigative report detailed Lumber Liquidators' purchases from some of Brazil’s riskiest regions and suppliers.

These demonstrations follow a raid of the same headquarters by federal authorities in September 2013 for suspected illegal wood imports. In a report released in October 2013, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) found Lumber Liquidators to be importing illegally sourced hardwood species from the last frontier of old-growth forests in the Russian Far East.

“These new findings from Brazil underscore the need for a thorough investigation into Lumber Liquidators’ sourcing practices around the world,” said Alexander von Bismarck, Executive Director of the Environmental Investigation Agency in Washington, DC.

“If companies want to buy wood from high-risk areas beset by illegal logging cartels, like the Amazon Basin and the Russian Far East, they must take serious measures to avoid supporting organized crime.”

Through a series of undercover visits posing as buyers and in-depth trade data analysis, EIA uncovered rampant illegality in Lumber Liquidators’ hardwood flooring supply chains. Originating in endangered Siberian tiger habitat, EIA traced Lumber Liquidators’ products through the hands of Chinese dealers who openly described their illegal practices, and ultimately into the United States.

The U.S. Lacey Act was amended in 2008 to ban imports of illegally sourced or traded timber and wood products into the United States, in recognition of a multi-billion dollar trade that undercuts legitimate forest sector jobs, contributes to climate change, and destroys global biodiversity.