Our Story
The story begins with an 18 year veteran in the wood industry who saw much waste of wood through a career. One day on a sales call he met a man with an unusual project. In that cabinet shop that day I met a man who was making a coffin for himself from a tree he planted as a boy, he was 76 at the time. I could not believe it. Since my specialty at the time was a focus on Wood Finish and Finishing systems for woodworkers and wood manufactures I offered to help finish his project with lacquers when he was done building it just because I was so amazed at the idea of what he did.
That day I thought of Treecycle America. I lived in Charlotte, the tree city of the south. I saw a huge amount of trees wasted after Urban Removal, just thrown in the dump and still being done. This is 40,000 to 80,000 lbs per day!!!! This information was gathered from local respectable Tree Care businesses that I poled, not to mention the 50 that I didn't. My goal was to create a managed forest in the Urban Forest. This means to think about how we plant, care and remove our city trees. Then we must have a consuming network to use the trees, mills and woodworkers, in a way we return a higher rate per ton of wood back to the economic engine of any city. We have all the folks, I just wanted to connect them. Secondly, create a Certification of this process with high ethical values. This is important for the future of the health of the Urban Canopy. We don't want trees coming down, we just want to utilize them when they do. We are doing this nation wide, and hopefully in Canada. The thing is in the north, wood isn't waste because of its stored solar energy, BTU's.
This process of using has to be parlayed with the planting world. We work with developers, city planners, urban foresters, and non-profit planter to push a more Native Species mix of trees trying to limit ornamentals and non-natives. Other than a few cases of blight and disease a strong forest is one that comes but naturally. Our Urban Forest is no different.
Lastly, our Chain of Custody. We have every trees that goes through our system of Certified Treecycle members must maintain and be audited to keep the Chain of Custody. We want to be able to verify wood and Local goods that were made in this way for many reasons. The main reason is to hold the high standards for Care, removal, use and replanting so we have a truly sustainable program
