Healing Our World Commentary: Salvaged Wood

By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

A New American Dream - Salvaged Wood

May the axe be far away from you;
May the fire be far away from you;
May there be rain without storm;
Lord of Trees, may you be blessed;
Lord of Trees, may I be blessed.
-- Hindu Prayer

According to the World Wildlife Fund, 95 percent of the forests in the lower 48 states have been logged at least once. The areas that have been clearcut have virtually every living thing removed from the land. The trees of the remaining forest are now at risk as they experience exposure to the elements that they never had before. Slowly, the death creeps inward, killing a much larger area than that which was originally logged.

Yet our appetite for wood products increases daily, fueled by the plethora of home improvement television shows sweeping the nation. Those with the means to remodel or build a new home want the best, and those desires could put our remaining forests in grave danger.

No more like this (Photo from "This Was Logging" by Ralph Andrews, 1954)

Fortunately, some creative entrepreneurs are finding unexpected, but obvious, sources for prime wood: old buildings. The wood salvage business could help slow the destruction of our remaining forests.

Throughout the country are old abandoned warehouses, mines, sawmills and other industrial buildings. Many of those buildings were built in the 1800s when huge, old growth timbers were being used. It was not uncommon for a 500 to 1,000 year old tree to be cut up and incorporated into a building. Loggers relentlessly chopped through forests of 12 foot thick Douglas Firs that soared over 200 feet with no branches for 40 to 60 feet of their height.

Now that wood is being sought after by followers of the home improvement craze who want the finest woods. The distressed look is in as well, so many buyers want the cracks and nails left in for that rustic appearance.

Makers of fine furniture are turning to wood salvagers for types of hardwood lumber that are no longer available commercially.

Wood from tree farms does not compare to salvaged old growth timber. Farmed trees are encouraged to grow fast and are cut down young, resulting in wood with lots of knots, thick growth rings and weak wood.

The Union Lumber Company Bandmill, Ft. Bragg, California built in 1887, supplied the largest percentage of redwood for new construction in San Francisco in 1998. (Photo courtesy Humboldt Bay Company)

Wood salvagers work hard for their prizes. In Northern California, crews work every day to dismantle giant timbers from an old door factory near the town of Weed. The Douglas fir beams are almost 20 feet tall and a foot thick. The six man crew will take a year and a half to remove the two million board feet of lumber in that factory. That town used to cut up old factories and burn the wood.

Although nearly eight billion board feet of new Douglas fir is produced each year, the salvaged wood sets an important recycling precedent.

Another unusual source for salvaged rare woods lies underwater. It was common for major logging operations to locate near rivers. Logs would be floated down the river to sawmills and would often be in the water for months. Between five and 15 percent of the trees would become waterlogged and sink, and the bottoms of many old lumber transportation rivers are littered with huge trees.

Log raft in the Washington in 1906 (Photo from "This Was Logging" by Ralph Andrews, 1954)

Bridges, piers and wooden vessels provide more sources of old timbers.

Not all states are supportive of this kind of novel recycling. It is illegal to bring up sunken logs in Florida, for example. Hopefully, this will change, as it becomes clear that we must become highly creative in utilizing resources. No longer can we tolerate unchecked resource exploitation and allow so much waste.

The United States, with only 4.7 percent of the world's population, generates nearly 25 percent of the world's waste. Much of that waste can be recycled to stem the rate of resource destruction.

A number of companies are featuring salvaged wood from a variety of sources. It can be expensive, but if you are remodeling or building a new home, you must consider the costs to our Earth that are rarely acknowledged.

Compute your budget to include costs such as air, water and soil pollution, toxic waste, and fewer resources for the future. Every tree cut down means less oxygen, more pollutants in our atmosphere, and less diversity of life. Use your good fortune wisely and use recycled material as much as you possibly can.

The American Dream of the post World War II era must be recreated. Our new dream must be to waste nothing and work hard to use no new materials until all existing ones have been exhausted.

Excessive affluence is no excuse for thinking of only the present, consuming our children's birthright and exhausting the gifts of our Earth.

RESOURCES

1. A few of the many wood salvaging operations out there include: http://www.buildinggreen.com/
http://www.oldgrowthtimbers.com/
http://www.fwds.com/ETL/html/profile.html
http://www.heartwoodassociates.com/
http://www.lostforest.com/
http://www.riverrecovery.com/

2. "Underwater Magazine" carried an interesting article about sunken logs. You can see it at: http://www.diveweb.com/commdive/features/uw-fa97.03.htm

3. Minnesota Public Radio carried a story about salvaged wood at: http://www.diveweb.com/commdive/features/uw-fa97.03.htm

4. Check out global wood recycling markets at: http://www.recycle.net/recycle/Wood/index.html

5. Don't use wood at all! Check out http://www.votco.com/

6. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Tell them that the time is now to start mandating building materials recycling. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html or you can search by state at http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html. You can also find your representatives at http://congress.nw.dc.us/innovate/index.html.

[Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle. He can be found looking sadly on all the new houses being built and wondering how much wood is in all the abandoned industrial buildings downtown. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his web site at http://www.healingourworld.com]