In the world of homebuilding and remodeling, wood is an important resource – building everything from the frames and floors of your home to the finishing touches on your cabinets and built-ins. With such a high demand for this precious material, it’s pertinent to ask ourselves: is wood sustainable?
The answer is that not all wood is created equally, and by our measure, reclaimed wood is the most sustainable wood you can use. In a day and age where deforestation is a major concern, what better option do you have than to use timbers that were felled over 100 years ago?
What Is Reclaimed Wood And Where Does It Come From?
At Manomin Resawn Timbers, we salvage wood from antique structures all over the country and repurpose them into high quality building materials that are ready for use in brand new homes. Our reclaimed wood products are not only beautiful relics of our past, but also amazingly sturdy and long lasting pieces of architecture.
Our wood is rescued from barns, farmhouses, factories, and warehouses that were built during the rapid expansion and Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. As homesteaders and industrymen alike settled the country, they made use of the abundant natural resources around them to build their structures.
The great forests of North America provided a bounty of sturdy wood that was ideal for creating these buildings that needed to survive intense wear and tear and weather harsh elements. The harder and more dense old growth wood would prove to last longer and resist rot and decay much better than timber from younger or faster growing trees.
We can still see the superiority of this old growth wood in these one to two hundred year old structures. These timbers that were originally harvested in the 19th century are still structurally sound and usable to this day.
Our skilled wood workers take these old timbers and boards and make them into new products that carry with them a real sense of history. Through our detailed reclaiming process, we clean, mill, and heat treat the wood so that it can fit perfectly into your design.
What Makes Reclaimed Wood The Most Sustainable Wood?
We believe that reclaimed sustainable wood is a truly renewable resource. The timbers that we salvage have already performed a job for over a hundred years, and they can keep on working as long as we preserve and treat them right.
By using reclaimed wood, we can reduce the strain on the modern forestry industry, removing the need for new wood floors, paneling, or timbers in numerous projects across the country. Every reclaimed wood floor that is installed accounts for about 15-30 new trees that would have been cut for that job.
The timbers we salvage have already been cut down and in most cases are sitting unused. Recycling these materials is a no-brainer as it means we get more use out of wood that has already been produced.
Reclaimed old growth wood is also a higher quality building material than lumber from the new growth forestry plantations that are trying to keep up with our demand. More dense and damage resistant, old growth wood from this era of our history simply lasts longer and does a better job.
With less need for maintenance and replacement, reclaimed timbers take another step towards beating other options as a sustainable wood. Overall, by recycling these existing resources, we can significantly reduce the sheer volume of new wood needed for construction.
Can We Make New Sustainable Wood?
Deforestation has been a large ecological problem for decades as industries grow their footprints and the need for wood continues to rise. New forestry is able to provide lumber for a lot of our new construction, but as housing demand increases, the strain on the industry gets larger and larger.
There are many efforts to make modern forestry sustainable for both economical and ecological reasons. Organizations like the Forest Stewardship Council offer certifications and policies to guide the growth of the forestry industry and provide resources for companies to participate in a sustainable solution.
Plantations and forestry sites employ a number of strategies to produce sustainable wood – keeping track of growth and harvest rates, preserving biodiversity, and limiting ecological impact on other species and natural resources in the area. These efforts make a real difference in the areas in which they are practiced.
Outside Factors On New Sustainable Wood
While the conservation efforts of organizations like Sustainable Forest Initiative are making big impacts on the industry, there are still many other factors to consider when assessing sustainable wood.
Illegal logging can generate up to $150 billion annually, representing a significant portion of the modern timber trade. This does not only undermine the economics of forestry, but the ecological practices as well.
Deforestation is also occurring around the world to make way for new human developments and agricultural uses. These areas that are cut are not being replaced with new trees and represent a total loss of forested land.
Even the more sustainable operations require large amounts of harvesting and processing, both of which are very energy intensive and drive a lot of fossil fuel use. In the US, forestry ranks second in fossil fuel usage across the manufacturing sector.
So How Does The Reclaimed Industry Move The Needle On Sustainable Wood
In the US, reclaimed wood makes up between 15-20% of the timber economy and is projected to continue to grow each year. This might not seem like a huge amount, but it represents a nearly $60 billion market share that will continue to increase over the next decade.
This amount is not insignificant, and it is an important part of the solution to the sustainable wood industry’s problems. The more existing timber that we can make use of and recycle, the longer we can stretch the timeline of new forests and ecological development.
Consider that each piece of our reclaimed timbers were harvested over 100 years ago, and have already been processed. Each piece of reclaimed wood that finds a new life represents energy and fuel that doesn’t need to be burned to harvest and process new timbers.
We wont claim that reclaimed wood is the sole solution for deforestation and a strained timber industry, but it certainly can move the needle.
Excited About Sustainable Wood?
If you are ready to contribute to a more sustainable wood industry, reach out to us to start looking through our beautiful collection of reclaimed wood products.
