Turning Urban Wood Waste into Local, Sustainable Opportunities

June 15, 2021

When the emerald ash borer—an invasive beetle native to Asia—began killing thousands of city trees in Southeast Michigan in the early 2000s, locals were left with few options to deal with the resulting wood waste. Urban trees, varying in growth rate, species, and size, are a challenge for traditional sawmills to process and sort. Both in Michigan and across the United States, dead urban trees are usually treated as trash and end up in landfills, burned, dumped on private land, or left to decay in woodlots. If they do find a second life as wood products, they are most often turned into firewood, mulch, or boiler fuel.

Emerald ash borer. Photo courtesy of David Cappaert from www.forestryimages.org

However, an innovative program called Urbanwood found a way to utilize the leftover wood waste in a way that not only reduces waste in a sustainable way but also stimulates local economies and supports Michigan communities. The program partners with local woodworking producers and businesses to reclaim urban wood waste and turn it into high-quality, sustainable wood products.

Urbanwood was founded in 2005 as a part of Recycle Ann Arbor and the Southeast Michigan Resource Conservation and Development Council’s efforts to encourage more recycling of dead urban trees, particularly those killed by the emerald ash borer. According to former Urbanwood coordinator Jessica Simons, Southeast Michigan’s dead urban trees could produce over 73 million board feet of lumber per year, which is enough to build over 5,600 homes. Urbanwood recognized the potential in all that urban wood waste.

Although urban wood is a bit more difficult to collect and sort, Urbanwood’s network of local sawmills are able to cut the reclaimed wood into lumber. Local processors dry and finish the wood. Woodworkers then turn the reclaimed lumber into a variety of products spanning handcrafted furniture, floor paneling, and art. These finished products populate local Urbanwood Marketplaces, such as the Genesee Habitat for Humanity located in the city of Flint.

Because of initiatives like Urbanwood, communities are able to manage their natural resources more sustainably, reduce wood disposal costs, and purchase locally made green products. Beyond the environmental benefits, urban wood waste has workforce advantages. Local businesses build stronger partnerships with wood industries to make use of sustainable raw materials while creating new products, jobs, and revenue.

Urbanwood is not alone in working to reduce, recycle, and reuse wood waste. Funding from the U.S. Forest Service supports the growth of other local networks, projects, and educational efforts around urban wood. These efforts in turn spurred the start of the Urban Wood Network, which brings together urban wood recycling programs in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Wisconsin.

In Maryland, through the Baltimore Wood Project, the U.S. Forest Service Research & Development department works with the State & Private Forestry division to explore various uses of urban wood. The Forest Service not only provides technical assistance and resources but also builds large-scale networked regional economies attracting public and private organizations, as well as urban and rural communities.

Programs like Urbanwood are examples of opportunities to support a circular economy. Rather than let valuable resources go to waste, circular economy practices work to design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use, and regenerate natural systems. Urbanwood is an example of how a circular economy initiative can have a multitude of benefits for the environment, the workforce, and local communities.

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