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The use of reclaimed
flooring has been promoted as a way to make flooring in a
sustainable way by eliminating the cutting of healthy forest trees.
But, actually, the use of reclaimed flooring has a heavier
environmental impact
than using trees cut from forests where more trees will be grown,
because it produces CO2 to transport and process the wood
but does not stimulate the removal of carbon from the atmosphere.
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The
reason is that as trees grow they remove CO2 from the air, and , through
photosynthesis, retain the
carbon fraction and release oxygen .
The carbon is used in the cellulose molecules that make up the
fiber of the tree. By
breaking these CO2 molecules trees actually remove far more carbon from
the atmosphere than is accounted for simply by the
weight of the carbon they retain and use.
Because the amount of pure
carbon in each cubic foot of each specie of wood is well documented, its
easy to tell exactly how much carbon you will remove from the atmosphere and
nail permanently to your floor when you install a Vermont Timberfloor
floor. Of course simply removing a tree from the forest does not remove carbon
from the atmosphere. It removes it from the forest.
 To remove that carbon from
the atmosphere two conditions must be met.
We have to “sequester” the carbon we remove (as in nailing it
to a floor for a century or more), and we have to allow the remaining
trees, or trees newly regenerated on that site, to grow and harvest even
more carbon.
Stated
another way, a
mature forest has reached a stage where there is very little growth
(carbon retention). It is
like a reservoir of water where no more can be added until some is drawn
off. By carefully
removing trees, the forest is stimulated to add carbon at a faster rate to
supply the new growth that results. As
long as the carbon removed from the forest is kept in solid form (your
floor) you have helped remove and sequester atmospheric carbon, the principal
greenhouse gas.
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Why
Vermont Timberfloors are even greener than our competetion
Of course energy is used
and CO2 generated in the process of cutting and processing trees into
flooring. Accurately figuring the net carbon you sequester in your floor
means we have to account for the carbon put into the atmosphere doing the
work required to get it there. The reason Timberfloors are especially
green is that we keep the energy used to create your floor to an absolute
minimum.
Here are carbon producing
steps Vermont Timberfloor uses
to create your floor and why each one uses less energy than industry
averages.
 Transportation
All our trees are harvested
near our sawmill, mostly within a twenty mile radius.
Many other sawmill businesses buy logs cut fifty or even hundreds
of miles away. Even better,
some of our trees are harvested right on the same land where we run our
sawmill. The transportation part of our carbon impact is minimized.
Processing
Our
sawing technology uses the narrowest
band saw possible to cut the logs into lumber,
requiring around 60% less energy than conventional sawmills and,
more important, producing much more usable wood and much less waste
(sawdust) for each tree cut.
Waste
products
The
sawdust that we do produce is used as livestock and plant bedding on our
farm, and then incorporated into the soil, using the carbon to increase
organic matter and soil health . Some producers burn their sawdust sending
that carbon back into the atmosphere.
The
unusable solid wood waste produced in sawing is burned to boil sap to make
Maple Syrup. That does
send carbon back into the air. Nobody’s
perfect, but we like to think Maple syrup is worth it!
Drying
Whenever
possible our lumber is naturally air dried before being kiln dried,
drastically reducing the energy used. The dry kilns we do use are located just a few miles from our
sawmill, minimizing the transportation
impact for this necessary step.
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marketing term “green” has no precise meaning and
its use is not regulated. “Green” is usually used to suggest that a
particular product is produced in a way that minimizes or eliminates
negative impact to the natural and the human environment.