But. Hardly anyone knows how nontransparent this market really yes still for that one tonne of charcoal requires 5 to 10 tons of would. Normally impact on the environment. Where the wood comes from theres often terrible human rights abuses theres poverty theres deforestation theres deserts of occasional ice of the day. But. Its completely unacceptable that tropical rain forests are being destroyed just to produce cheeta charcoal should be happening its madness bonds and. Nigeria with 186000000 inhabitants its the most populated country in africa this is where most of the charcoal imported to the e. U. Comes from its a huge business not only in nigeria paraguayan in south america is another big global player. According to the un over half the trees cut down worldwide are burnt to produce charcoal with severe effects to the climate. Nigerian merchants praise the high quality of charcoal derived from tropical wood its particularly durable and its embers last much longer but these traders dont have to certify where they get their chalk all the wood could be from one of the few sustainable plantations for tropical timber and africa or it could have been illegally logged in the rain forest. Kingsley i can use specializes in export ready to be field with charcoal. Merch. Since who want to import tropical timber to the e. U. Have to certify its origins the process is strictly regulated but those guidelines dont apply to charcoal. 88 percent of the charcoal used in germany is imported nigeria alone supplies 31000. 00 tons a year but most consumers have no idea what they are using to grill their sausages. Theres still a germany and council tax the flagellar. Where it will form an indoor. Yeah. Because the jail there. Feel up to contain up all the stealable 40 feet contain a. Charcoal from nigeria made in germany made possible because there are no restrictions on importing charcoal made from tropical timber to the e. U. The spoke of garden trade fair in cologne this is where the outdoor grilling industry comes together many distributors cant see any problem with charcoal from the tropics the trade association however would rather not comment. Here only view what tough from france has been fighting against imported tropical charcoal for years he works with the ngo the forests trust t. F. T. They want charcoal to be processed only from sustainably cultivated forests and for consumers to easily see if theyre buying charcoal from native or illegally logged tropical wood there is no transparency. But then what is a real and critical. Because of some info to spread them to be produced. But there we are british on of their tree can create over europe and walk and work on the ball because. If we dont do that if youd not be clear also for the distance. That is a hard and although all male member says it is a small request very hard. Distributors who keep importing. This is what the market will force their hand oh you the moment we change the market everyone who wants to carry on as usual will be left no other choice is that all this off in public. In france t. F. T. Has already managed to change the market most buyers for a large retail chains have come to reject charcoal from tropical forests. Is meeting a belgian who imports african charcoal the man is convinced of his products quality and he even has a seal to prove its been produced responsibly she cant understand the concern about tropically sourced charcoal. With high leaf and what if what you have to realize that there are also sustainably managed tropical forests just wonderful hey if i dont see why these products should be banned or you do i think you cant forget that the charcoal market is helping feed thousands of people in africa with the 5th a dose wed be making things too easy on ourselves if we suddenly decided to just ban everything sourced from nigeria where john will be out of this he could use to judge an issue we need to actively deal with the problem south wholl be forced herself to say i dont hold emetic. In nigeria its true that many people depend on the charcoal business in places where qualified jobs are hard to come by there they often live in the humblest conditions. People like kobe. He and his family make charcoal for a living they travel across the country as nomads and log trees wherever they can in the wild not unsustainable estates. The process is simple enough the wood is stocks covered with dirt and then let. These socalled kilns seal off most oxygen allowing the wood. Down slowly in about 11 days its reduced to charcoal 5 i walk past that are strong it down produce it. Within the amounts. We dont enjoy the walk to enjoy the world is a hard. Level most times when you come back you were tired and. Most of us used thoughts after coming back from the war in order to regain your strength. For one tonne of charcoal the workers need up to 10 tons of wood most of the energy escapes as acts as heat exhaust leaks from the piles and the surrounding soil is contaminated with toxins. The forestation is a huge problem in nigeria. A study by the un food and Agriculture Organization found that 410000. 00 hectares of forest were cut down each year. Not only does that have a major impact on the climate it also leads to erosion and the forming of new deserts. But the forests arent being destroyed just to make charcoal theyre also being cleared for farmland and yet 87 percent of all trees logged in nigeria are used for firewood or charcoal. Harry hoffman is a scientist for years hes been concerned about the charcoal production in africa. Its the only way they can make a living during the dry season towards the end of the dry season before they return to that field if theres nothing left to pay for school so they go to the forest and cut down trees to make charcoal they can sell on the street even if it is illegal. When they do they risk their fields drying up. Back to germany. Is the wood specialist at the World Wildlife fund today hes brought bags of charcoal to the tune institute in hamburg to once trade restrictions for charcoal and hes backing up his arguments with facts if it were up to him importing illegal timber into the e. U. Would be banned as would the charcoal produced from that so called and his colleagues want to see just how much wood from tropical forests these bags contain. Theres a lot of pressure from consumers not just for these products coal in particular is almost a cultural asset for germans finding a legal wood in their charcoal would leave a bad taste in their mouths thats misuse businesses cant afford that that utilized a few months or years ago this product wouldnt have gained such broad attend. To date importers dont need to show that the wood for their charcoal was legal. And any product information on the back doesnt show the country of origin either. Is one of germanys leading specialists in determining what. He can say where the charcoal is from but he can discern which type of wood it was made from even if it is imprinted on the back. He instantly recognizes some native trees species. Before i put it under the microscope i do a pretty examination sometimes i use a magnifying glass to determine what type were dealing with. Ive already dug up a town from the bottom of the bag and as you can see what makes chunk also special is that unlike wood its brittle. Creates these clean edges and i can look at those with my magnifying glass. Here for example we have an ash tree. This bag doesnt contain any tropical timber other bags do. When. You swing by the nearest gas station to pick up a bag of charcoal of course you have no idea how far it has traveled already and what ecological footprint it has left behind. Tire forests are being cut down in countries like nigeria or in Eastern Europe and sometimes even protected forests are being plundered and that has an immense impact on the ecosystem biodiversity and on the climate overall we need to act. We care we have briquettes. Here we have a product that were looking at. You know yes. This is pure charcoal. Here we have a different product with the slogan for the sake of the environment its the c o 2 neutral. Inspects 20 bags of. Sand then had various hardware and Grocery Stores in many cases its evident the wood isnt native. Forces because before ive had a look at them under the microscope i cant say for sure these samples are definitely have tropical origins kind its not that simple but i can say that the ones ive looked at definitely not from reg you know wood. So we know for certain that it isnt. Compressed bearcats are especially hard to examine they consist mostly of coal dust and starch but even here the expert is able to find traces of wood. De mint told them individually identifying wood species is called wood anatomy we identify types of wood based on their anatomical structure or model the people have been examining plant structures for 2 or 300 years whats important is to have Reference Material and smartly and. Thats why the kunin institute of Wood Research stores thousands of samples of various trees. But in spoke to him at my ease on the structural features we can see here we can definitely say this word is not from a temperate or even boreal region but we are sort of stuck. That means this charcoal was definitely tropically sourced. 8 of the 20 bags they examined did contain wood from rain forests. That amounts to 40 percent of their samples 6 5 bags even contained red list species of endangered or restricted will of. The findings are upset ng for your highness tannen of the World Wildlife fund. Not the innocents who feed you this is been a topic for so many years to find such a catastrophic results here in germany was shocking it cant go on like this in. Many distributors wont take responsibility for their products origin sustainable cultivation Environmental Protection labor laws none of it matters. The important ones cost and see reduction costs are much much lower than operating a collar here in germany and so that makes it attractive to transporting it over the ocean from nigeria to germany or europe is a fairly small portion of the total cost to untie and what they can some cost in the us and. Most germans have no idea that their charcoal is sometimes produced with peoples bare hands and colby would never have guessed that his talk was used to grill german sausages for many industrial make use of power from cost to us on the industry to don make use of its like those before. They also make use of charcoal. Also to people who take it from defined us there but i dont know where they use it for all we use it for them on the ticket system. Kobe and his workers get 3. 00 for each bag of charcoal even in nigeria thats not a lot of money but the supply chain in africa is long gone transporters sorters distributors Everyone Wants to turn a profit the jobs are highly sought after. Most jobs provided all by level at a 0. 60 house what shop will be checking to see is one of the few jobs that actually brings jobs down to the rural areas to the local woman to people who otherwise they have no education have nothing to fall back to have him up there. For the. Then here is the lesson theres really no major industry here to cry to call me this is a boss. That also wanted to work because the other thing. And this sector is growing. Just one study estimates the market could be washed up to 12000000000. 00 by 2030 with 12000000. 00 people working at it thats a shadow market most of the money made in not sector will stay with the powerful distributors solution and paying. The money isnt made in nigeria its made in europe. Over here we have the products were ready to ship to places like poland this is ready what about the continent. In 2015 alone exports from nigeria to poland grew by 51 percent. But im biased from africa most time to repackage and then sell to was. On trees for land is a very big haul there by a lot of us and europe markets. The charcoal is shipped to europe in containers the t. N. T. Organization has seen to it that less nigerian charcoal is imported to france but exports to poland are on the rise here conservationists say charcoal from tropical wood is simply repackaged and distributed throughout europe. Continues his search in poland. More low that up forces to occur. We are here to see if this factory really does produce charcoal look at all some of the we want to know if all the wood was locally sourced and processed with us. So this is on our previous visits to poland. We learned that some only pretend to be producers. Actually imports charcoal repackage it and then sell it. And then they claim it was produced here in their factory said. Today on t. V. And his colleagues are visiting europes largest charcoal producer once the company grease ground has 3 factories that produce 15 percent of all the charcoal consumed e. U. Wide. And managing director is guiding a tour through the facilities. The conservationists want to find out if all the charcoal is truly produced here in poland or if its mixed with charcoal from tropical woods. The most important clue is a look in the Business Books hes interested in the amounts of charcoal and wood coming and going so far hes been acting on behalf of french chains that have committed themselves to offer only sustainable charcoal. And that the forest trust checks that no tropicals would find its way into the backs of. Their biggest difficulty is figuring out how many tons of wood the Company Needs to produce one ton of charcoal. Based on the method employed the amounts can vary greatly. Now its p. L. Of these job to estimate how efficiently the plant works and compare the wood purchases with the charcoal sales competition in this sector is fierce as is the temptation to cheat with illegal african charcoal. When the countries keep production costs down and Companies Manage to buy raw material from dubious sources of yours does then they can earn higher Profit Margins on the import and trade than when done by import of the model for the. Company its. Just. While importers pay very little for their raw material european producers must dig deep into their pockets for the wood. Producers traders everyone looks to cut corners to make sure i can make those prashad auctions that are forced onto them by the market by consumerism and unfortunately that often leads to the cheapest would be illegal wood getting into the system. The largest producer in Europe States that its wood is purchased from native forests thats a big cost factor in the book theres lots of void whats important is that the wood is actually from this region cultivated sustainably and is so that it can be labeled as responsibly produced the charcoal from boston. Native wood from responsible forestry that means the amount of wood that can be logged is limited to how much can re grow. European foresters have known this principle for centuries thats how they responded to the massive clearing of forests in the early 18th century they call it sustainability. Of gold from this region. This particular place. For 5 to make sure the charcoal is as sustainable as the managing director said it was their next appointment is with the forester again checks the production books and the woods origin. To make sure the forests are large enough to supply the amount of wood the manufacture needs ario of takes careful note of the numbers of hectares the age of the trees and the amount of wood extracted. From the 4 as they plant or even not for always. Places he hasnt found a bug in the system yet but he keeps asking the manufacturers. Quality manager and the forester both take all his questions. Unlike in africa the amount of woodland in the e. U. Is growing. In poland it went from 8800000 hectares in 1990 to 9400000 hectares in 2015 that only works with truly sustainable methods. P. L. Of you what time is very pleased with what hes seen here. They have a forest cultivation plan set up for 10 years to fill with a registry for each logging so. And that way they know exactly how much wood theyre allowed to take from each plant do dismiss means traceability right back to where it was felled and we know theyve been cultivating sustainably for years in this ward here for example is 60 years old so theyre out of. Wood for guilt free charcoal. Thanks to the traditional forestry guidelines for modern technology and careful documentation this forest will continue supplying as much wood as it does today for centuries to come a fistful. Of what he didnt know. Is that its that simple so that theres plenty of wood right here in poland that you dont need to buy it in africa. That out there is enough deciduous trees to cover the demand for charcoal was not settled. Hopes to someday find charcoal in supermarkets that is only produced from sustainable what would in europe there are many sustainable manufacturers like this one in poland and companies that produce charcoal and electricity i think exception to the rule and so he sets off for france. One of the most modern charcoal factories in the world is here in the region. The region is also home to vast deciduous form. And yet france still imports most of its charcoal and this manufacturer wants to prove that producing charcoal in france can in fact be profitable. You know what it lacks in size the business makes up for in innovation. The french Government Supports it with subsidies. The managing directors were even invited to the World Climate conference in bonnies 2017 to talk about eco friendly charcoal production at home and in developing countries. Id also this word here comes from the Forest Park East of sun. Thanks to modern technology they only need 2 and a half tons of wood for each ton of charcoal they produce that means they can preserve 40 percent of the wood in comparison the earth mounds in africa only have an efficiency rate of about 10 percent meaning theyre kilns require 4 times the amount of wood. But there. Is already off at the upper lip and there have been taking. The charcoal is dried in huge baskets with the excess heat given off during production. First album was to set up on a couple hours here is proof that were able to make renewable charcoal. All it takes is Sustainable Forestry and todays technology. That using this method can produce charcoal electricity and heat Free Products at once from one single resource for celtic also for the readers of quotes what makes this product competitive and profitable in your article you visit to see if. This site provides 10000 homes with steady electricity. The tropical charcoal producers can only dream of having such a modern plant. The home built by world wide fall where experiencing the deforestation of several 1000000 hectares each year or this is that is so much and so relevant that it makes up about 15 percent of manmade