For decades, dead city trees have had a dreadful fate — the wood chipper.
But some Michigan organizations and businesses are fostering a new mentality in cities — one that sees more than just dead wood.
Most urban trees end up in the wood chipper when they die. Photo: cseeman (Flickr)
“We’re trying to help communities and businesses work together to find value in removed trees,” said Jessica Simons, natural resource specialist with the Southeast Michigan Resource Conservation and Development Council, which leads the Urban Wood Project.
The project links sawmills to communities to obtain “urban wood.” That’s wood that comes from trees from city or private removals or killed by storms or pests.
The sawmills mill it and sell it.
The Emerald Ash Borer outbreak spurred the project.
“People lost thousands of trees so it was devastating from an emotional perspective,” Simon said. “It was also expensive to remove all of those trees … and we thought, this wood could still be milled and sold.”
Another important part of the project is educating people on the opportunities, Simon said.
“Furniture flooring, lumber, firewood, mulch, biomass fuel … there are a lot of uses for dead trees,” Simon said.
The project encourages cities to inventory trees so they know the locations of higher and lower quality wood.
“When you have an inventory, you can base your forestry decisions off science, not politics,” said Margaret Studer, district forester with the Genesee Conservation District. The conservation district works with Flint on a pilot program to resell urban wood and is in talks with the Urban Wood Project about partnering.
Studer said inventorying trees in Flint was an important step in reclaiming urban wood.
“It led to a management plan,” Studer said. “After we developed the management plan, we determined whether or not there is a market for urban wood. There is.”
Selling city wood
Recycle Ann Arbor’s ReUse Center is member of the Urban Wood Project and sells the project’s milled city wood.
“People see real value in this great lumber,” said Gary Yurick, program manager of the ReUse Center. “At any given time, we could have 27 species of wood represented on our racks.”
Sales have increased steadily since the center started carrying the wood in 2008, Yurick said.
Revenue was approximately $18,000 in 2008, and so far in 2011 it’s up to $44,000, he said.
Flint is selling city wood at a Habitat for Humanity resale store where it is popular with artists.
“We’re not like the Home Depot where your choices are limited,” Studer said. “At any given time, we might have 30 different species.”
The resale store’s location —right next to the Flint Farmer’s Market — is a natural fit.
“People who buy urban wood are similar to those shopping at the market,” Studer said. “These are people who want to purchase local goods and support their community.”
Changing old habits
But there are challenges with the program – one is finding mills that will work with the wood.
City trees take abuse that can make them difficult to mill. Photo: TravelingMan (Flickr)
“Traditionally, trees removed from a forest and sent to a mill are high quality logs, while urban trees are managed for other qualities,” Simon said. “Urban trees also take a lot of abuse … nails in them, cables, which could damage (mill) equipment.”
Convincing cities to participate isn’t easy either.
“I don’t think Ann Arbor has been that amenable,” Yurick said. “It’s kind of frustrating in such a progressive city.”
Kerry Gray, an urban forestry and natural resources planning coordinator with Ann Arbor, said the city is exploring ways to use wood in “higher value ways.”
“We don’t have a wood utilization program right now,” Gray said. “We compost some of the wood, we use some for our large tree planting program.”
Gray said the city is in the midst of an urban forestry plan that would address some of the challenges of salvaging urban wood.
“We’re looking at public perception … people might think we’re harvesting urban trees to sell for lumber,” Gray said. “We also have to look at where we could store logs, and set up a bidding process for people to bid on them.”
Gray said working with the Urban Wood Project is certainly an option.
Simon recognizes the difficulties cities face in changing habits.
“It’s simple to cut down trees and put them through a grinder,” Simon said. “There are also issues of transporting them.”
Wood waste accounts for about 17 percent of the waste at municipal solid waste landfills in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. In addition to cutting down the amount of wood sent to landfills, Simon sees the project as an economic benefit.
“It’s not unusual for a sizable city to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on wood waste removal,” Simon said.
Studer said removing a single tree can range from $600 to $1,000, and that doesn’t include stump grinding.
Not every community is the same, but the bottom line is dead wood can serve a higher purpose than being fed through a chipper or sent to a landfill, Simon said.
“We’re encouraging communities to be creative,” she said. “We realize that this may look different in every community but we’re trying to encourage sustainability and cut waste.”
It has been interesting to read the comments on this article, but I struggle with the arguments that defend current wasteful practices as justification to prevent hypothetical unethical behavior. In any other case, taxpayers are outraged when their resources are not maximized to their highest value — Why is this not the case when we are talking about trees? The leading urban forestry professional organizations have excellent structures for encouraging communities to build sustainable plans to plant and care for their trees following recommended best practices. A plan to sustainably use wood from prescribed tree removals can (and should!) be built into these plans as an element of responsible land stewardship. To learn more about this initiative and the efforts taking place across the country, please visit the Urban Forest Products Alliance (www.urbanforestproducts.org).
I think it is a very good idea. Of course there are people who would abuse anything for a buck. This country is not suffering from a lack of rip off barons. That is not an argument for not using a historic resource. There is a community of wordworkers, artisans, contractors, boat builders, furniture makers, instrument makers, artists, weekend warriors, etc who would produce things that would enhance the quality of life for alot of people in a alot of ways. The people who could do this know who they are. This is another of those political problems in the catagory of “Yes, we have no bananas today”. I would think that it is diffficult, possibly impossible, to structure the use of this resource in a positive way in most communities. But, hey, where to I sign up to help?
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Bill, your concerns carry equal weight here in Michigan. Creating an inventory of “high quality” trees could certainly lead to more political shenanigans, not less, as implied by one quote in the article. The City of Flint considered selling off many of its prime parkland trees just to make a quick buck. Politicians rarely consider the long-term impacts, especially the backwards-looking Republican “leaders” which seem so prevalent today.
There is some danger in giving a profit motive for removing more trees than are necessary. Mills might take a while to corrupt the culling process, but our republican monopoly in Columbus has proposed more than once that they want to harvest trees from our state parks ,using private logging companies judgement as to which and how many trees get harvested. Also, many in Columbus were/are overjoyed at the idea of cutting trees all over the state to burn for the production of electric power. On the city level, it could hopefully be more wisely considered and implemented.