The following report is from the New York Times.
A months-long investigation by London-based nonprofit Earthsight and Indonesian environmental group Auriga Nusantara has revealed that some of America’s favorite RVs are built from the destruction of pristine rainforests on the other side of the world.
Sheets of tropical ‘lauan’ plywood are used in the walls, floors and ceilings of RVs made by brands like Jayco and Winnebago. The report, Unhappy Campers, reveals that the RV industry is now by far the biggest consumer of tropical wood in the US, and much of this comes from wholesale clearance of tropical rainforest in Indonesia – the most unsustainable wood in the world.
Earthsight and Auriga spent months investigating the trade, first visiting a remote corner of Borneo where vast swathes of orangutan habitat are being cleared to make way for a plantation of fast-growing timber. Where lush forests recently stood, they found barren expanses of bare earth, with heavy machinery at work transporting freshly-cut logs.
Members of local Indigenous communities claim that the clearance has disrupted their access to forest resources which they rely on for their livelihoods, and that communication with, and compensation from PT Indosubur Sukses Makmur, the company concerned, has been minimal.
The NGOs then used shipment records and company reports to piece together where the wood from the felled trees was headed. They identified an Indonesian plywood company, PT Kayu Lapis Asli Murni (PT KLAM), which in 2024 sourced 87 per cent of its tropical timber from rainforest clearance in the area Earthsight/Auriga visited. Fifty per cent of this company’s exports in 2024 were to two US firms, MJB Wood and Tumac Lumber. MJB Wood’s two other Indonesian suppliers of lauan are also buying wood from deforestation in Borneo.
MJB Wood is the main supplier of lauan plywood to the best-selling RV brand Jayco. Company reports show that both MJB Wood and Tumac Lumber have supplied Patrick Industries, a maker of RV parts whose customers include Thor Industries (which owns Jayco), Forest River and Winnebago.
While it is impossible to say with certainty that a particular vehicle or production line is using deforestation wood from Indonesia, these figures mean it is almost certain that the Indonesian lauan plywood imported by MJB Wood and Tumac Lumber from PT KLAM and other Indonesian suppliers and sold on to customers in the RV industry includes wood from deforestation in Borneo.
The industry is well aware of the environmental impacts of lauan, and the companies importing and using the wood claim in public that sustainability is at the core of their business. But investigators found that more sustainable wood is easily available, as lauan logs from forests certified as sustainably managed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) are plentiful in Indonesia. Earthsight calculates that if RV makers used only FSC-certified lauan, the cost of producing the average RV would rise by at most $20. Yet the RV industry refuses to pay even that paltry price.
Earthsight and Auriga wrote to all the companies named for comment ahead of the report’s release. None had replied at the time of publication.
“Indonesia has already lost 23 million hectares, or 20%, of its rainforest since 1990, at an immense cost to our climate, ecosystems and Indigenous peoples,” said Timer Manurung, chair of Auriga Nusantara. “The destruction has to stop. Companies in the United States and worldwide must clean up their supply chains by excluding timber from deforestation, including from Indonesia.”
“Nature-loving RV owners will be horrified to learn that their hobby risks destroying rainforests,” said Sam Lawson, Earthsight’s director. “America’s RV giants need to get out of the 1980s and implement the kinds of minimum sustainability standards other US corporates have had in place for decades.”
Read the full NY Times report here. Please note there may be a paywall.
