Curbside treecycling

High-end use for urban trees saves landfill space

Posted by Erik Hoffner (Guest Contributor) at 3:53 PM on 12 Apr 2008

Read more about: North Carolina | waste | greenish companies | placemaking

A company in North Carolina is making some good things from urban trees which have to be cut down for one reason or another: high-end lumber from what was once considered good only for firewood or mulch. They process 15,000 to 20,000 board feet a year of local urban lumber from private land for use in homes, sheds, barns, farms, or woodworking projects.

It's estimated that 2 million board feet of lumber is wasted annually in the local landfills in the Charlotte metro area due to storms, land clearing, maintenance, or disease. I'm sure much the same can be said for other cities.

Anyone doing good things with unwanted wood in your neighborhood?

For story: Curbside treecycling
5 Comments | Post a Comment

We've got walnut thieves.

Locally there have been several operations driving around and telling homeowners that their street or front yard black walnut trees are diseased and have to be removed for "public safety."

If the person appears to go along they snatch the valuable wood for furniture and gun stocks and skeedadle frequently leaving waste behind.

Always call your city public works department and confirm that removal of your street trees is scheduled and necessary if you have any questions. Make the call yourself, rather than letting the foreman lend you his phone.

Better safe than sorry.

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 12:41 AM on 13 Apr 2008

Dune restoration...

...sometimes the city here will use some old, dead, trees and place them on the beach to hold sand from new dune-building projects.

It's especially popular with old christmeas or pine trees.

by Tasermons Partner at 12:53 AM on 13 Apr 2008

Urban Lumber

There's an outfit (mostly one guy) salvaging urban lumber in Springfield & Eugene, Oregon. I don't know about their volume, but the few times I've been in their storefront, they've had a nice selection of a variety of woods.

<http://www.urbanlumbercompany.com>

by x2fer at 12:44 AM on 14 Apr 2008

The Pittsfield Elm, &c.

A historical incident of urban treecycling is noted in Campanella's book , The Republic of Shade: "Broken, branded, and shorn of its limbs, the 'central gem' of Pittsfield was finally laid to rest in 1864, 'amid the tears of the sternest men.' Wielding the ax was a man with the ironic name of Sylvanus Grant. An African-American woodsman, his felling of the Pittsfield Elm made him something of a local celebrity....The wreckage of the tree itself was auctioned off, its scraps carved into bric-a-brac, an armchair, and picture frames to hold portraits of the tree itself."

The Pittsfield Elm was a very special tree, more so than many street trees, but treecycling is a great idea. It fits into contemporary discourses about DIY, life cycle of materials, and greenhouse gas reduction (landfills contribute a lot of methane).

Some folks at the City of Boston considered a treecycling program. I think it is fair to assume that in older cities, overmature trees make up the greater share of a city's street tree population (see Maco and McPherson 2002), so there are numerous opportunities to recycle urban wood. (Check out UFEI's urban wood website.)

local ecology | http://localecology.org

by ecology at 11:17 AM on 14 Apr 2008

the Pittsfield Elm!

Cool, our office is 20 minutes south of Pittsfield. I'll have to learn more about this legend of a tree.

Enjoyed your article in Human Flower Project, btw:

http://www.humanflowerproject.com/index.php/weblog/street ...

Interesting to read about Oakland's urban tree list. Too bad madrone's not on there. One of my favorite native CA trees, so cool to look at, and so cool to the touch. When I taught envi education in CA for a while, that was one of the kids' favorite things, the 'refrigerator tree.'

Erik

The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,200+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more

by Erik Hoffner at 12:20 PM on 14 Apr 2008
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