Wood products and sustainability

Escanaba — Sustainability.

It’s one of those words that the marketeers have battered into the realm of meaninglessness. It’s gone down the road of “eco” and “green.” Yet, in the world of forestry, it still has a solid, science-based reputation.

Each year, Lake Superior State University issues a list of banned words, or words that have been so abused that they ought to be banned. Perhaps, “sustainable” should be submitted.

Sustainability, within the context of cradle to grave analyses, has been closely examined within the forest industry. Jim Bowyer helped pioneer these analyses in a credible manner. Dovetail Associates has paved that rough road with insight based on a solid scientifically defensible process.

If you’re interested in these ideas, pick-up Bowyer’s book, “The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise.”

It’s hard to wave a “here I am” flag in an ocean of verbal misuse and political perversion. So many things are cited as “sustainable” when they are not.

Longer story short, and a story with ongoing research, the forest industry and wood products continue to be among the most environmentally sustainable and beneficial rock stars at our disposal. Yet, many public perceptions continue to paint the harvest of trees with a black hat.

True sustainability consists of a positive track record from the extraction of raw material to the permanent disposal of the products manufactured. This record includes all the inputs and outputs that are associated with that group of products. Wood wins by a mile.

With forest products, it includes the harvest of trees, the mills that produce good stuff, and the final disposition of those products. It’s complicated. There’s lots of math. However, at the end of the day, forest products rank way ahead of any other set of products in terms of energy use, carbon and climate change, water consumption, and any other metric.

In the world of “reduce, recycle, and reuse,” wood has a fourth “r.” It’s renewable. No other raw material can make this claim.

If you’re interested in building the smallest environmental footprint possible, then the use of forest products will get you there the quickest. That, and replacing fossil fuels with wood, when and where possible.

Humanity’s use of forest products is long and increasingly diverse. Heating and cooking with wood goes back to our migration out of Africa. Heating and cooling, or thermal energy, continues to be the smartest fuel, and quite climate friendly, despite “common” knowledge.

Many other technologies have creeped into our daily use, including clothing and foodstuffs. A wide array of chemicals are sourced from trees. Coffee is sourced from trees! We cannot even light our homes without trees, if not used directly for power production, at least for the poles to transport that power from source to light switch.

In many ways, wood products can, and probably should, replace those made from steel, concrete, or plastics (petroleum). Substituting wood for other raw materials reduces our collective environmental impact. It’s climate smart. Harvesting trees provides for wildlife habitat, clean water, healthy soils, and many other benefits, besides solid revenue and local economics. We get our cake and can eat it, too.

Science figured this out decades ago. Emerging technologies spell a bright and sustainable future, such as using trees to build plastic bottles, car tires, or electric batteries. Such things as mass timber and nanotechnology are gradually finding their way into mainstream business and the regulatory environment.

Yet, one of the primary barriers to adopting these Earth-friendly ideas is the public perception that still regards timber harvest and forest disturbances as bad things. Forest management is a huge and versatile implement in the toolbox of environmental and social solutions, especially here in the Lake States. Future generations may look back and wonder why it took us so long to accept this set of tools.