what are climate-smart wood products?
Climate-smart wood products refer to wood-based materials that are sourced and manufactured in ways that help mitigate climate change and improve the environment. Forestree Collective’s procurement, finishes, and applications are what make our end products and work climate-smart. Our business achieves this via the following priorities:
1. Sustainable sourcing
Sustainable sourcing: The wood we source locally within Sonoma County is wood that is otherwise chipped or burned. If left in forest, these can trees increase the risk of extreme wildfire. Our goal is to partner with forestry professions to ensure that our wood is being sourced from forests that are managed responsibly to ensure that timber harvests do not lead to deforestation or ecosystem degradation. This includes practices like selective logging, reforestation, and preserving and enhancing biodiversity and habitat. By removing this material, larger diameter trees are better able to survive and thrive versus overgrown forest conditions.
2. Carbon Sequestration
Carbon storage: Trees are natural carbon sinks, meaning that they capture and store carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere in their roots, trunks and branches and leaves. Climate-smart wood products can help mitigate climate change by keeping this stored carbon in the wood for longer periods of time versus the immediate release of this greenhouse gas when burned. Durable wood products like those we make, keeps the carbon locked away versus the common alternatives of burning, chipping or leaving this material in place to decompose.
Wood as a substitute for more carbon-intensive materials: Using wood in place of materials like steel, concrete, or plastic can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of buildings and other goods that humans use because wood has a lower embodied carbon footprint. Since we source and manufacture within 100 mile radius of our sourcing, our carbon footprint is lower than goods sourced from far away.
3. Circular Economy
Forest health: Our forests need increased stewardship to prevent them from burning during catastrophic wildfire events. To get there, increased treatments are needed where possible to remove overgrowth of material to enable a return of various land management strategies such as prescribed burning, or good fire. When material needs to be removed, this can be made into products for our local economy versus chipping or burning it.
Durable, long-lasting products: Creating high-quality, durable wood products that last longer helps reduce the need for frequent replacements, conserving resources and reducing environmental impacts and support forest health.
Waste reduction: Our climate-smart wood products are often designed for reuse, recycling, or upcycling, contributing to a circular economy.
Local businesses and jobs: Communities with dense forest resources such as Sonoma County, can sustainably provide wood resources for local wood products that can support jobs in forestry and stewardship. This works supports people, ecology and economy. It is circular in nature and does not over extract due to its scale.
4. sustainable Construction materials
Sustainable buildings: In the construction sector, wood products like cross-laminated timber (CLT), engineered wood, and wood-frame construction are increasingly seen as climate-smart options due to their lower carbon emissions compared to traditional concrete and steel. These materials store carbon and offer an eco-friendly alternative for creating sustainable, energy-efficient buildings. We’re beta testing building materials at this time to increase our capacity to use low to no value wood produced during forest health treatments.
Energy efficiency: Wood products can also contribute to energy efficiency in buildings by providing natural insulation, reducing the need for heating and cooling, and thus lowering the building’s overall energy consumption. Waste biomass can also be processed into heat and electricity to serve as back of the meter offsets for mills and kiln drying operations.
5. increasing forest health
Stewardship is needed for increased forest health: In our changing climate, the dry periods are getting drier and wetter seasons wetter. This means that we will increasingly lean on natural ecosystems to help mitigate what scientists call “climate whiplash.” Forests are an essential part of this solution as they help absorb water, create shade and habitat, and store large amounts of carbon. However, if forests burn at high intensities, they can’t perform these critical functions. We need to protect them through proactive stewardship that entails thinning, removals, select harvesting and prescribed burning for maximum resilience. Our work helps offset a portion of forest treatments to remove excess woody materials.
Promoting forest restoration and conservation: Climate-smart wood products support initiatives that help conserve forests, restore degraded land, and promote biodiversity. This helps maintain critical ecosystem services provided by forests such as regulating water cycles, protecting wildlife, and preserving soil health. We partner with local nonprofits to expand upon these areas of impact and are researching various certifications.
We utilize low-to-no value logs from Sonoma County forests to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase forest health; enhance carbon sequestration in the forests through increased wildfire resilience and via the creation of durable wood products; foster a more vibrant forest stewardship economy so that communities in densely forested places can keep up with the ongoing care our forests need; and, procure our work and distribute it locally within the Bay Area to lower transportation greenhouse gas emissions.
Forestree Collective’s sourcing and manufacturing is a Bay Area climate-smart resource for reducing the carbon footprint of interior and exterior wood products and building materials. Dig deeper on this subject with the Climate Smart Wood Group by visiting their website.