Finding the Highest Uses for Urban Wood Waste

by J.K. FairchildEach day, thousands of trees from the urban forest that stand in the way of commercial development will be removed in the name of progress. Land will be cleared to make room for new buildings and parking lots, causing trees to be cut down. They will most likely be chopped into pieces and sent to the landfill as solid waste. According to Steve Bratkovich, Forest Products Specialist, US Forest Service, “The equivalent of 3.8 billion board feet from municipal trees alone, is annually either landfilled, burned, chipped or left to rot. This is roughly equivalent to 30% of the US annual hardwood lumber production.” To use some of this waste, Marcus von Skepsgardh founded PAL’s Tree Recycling Yard, a nonprofit urban tree recycling program in the San Francisco Bay area. Nationally, PAL’s offers a prototype of a workable urban tree recycling operation and locally, it provides a source of recycled and salvaged wood products for the public, while offering an alternative destination for urban trees and logs otherwise headed for landfill. The end results include substantial landfill diversion, valuable uses for urban waste wood, green building materials, reduced demand for virgin timber, conservation of natural resources, increased public […]

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