Have you ever stopped to think of how many wood products we use in our lives? From the houses in which we live to the chairs in which we sit, we are in constant use of items made with wood. Here are a few facts to consider:

• In 2003 alone, the EPA found the U.S. produced roughly six million tons of wood waste.
• The average person uses enough wood and paper products annually equivalent to a100-foot-tall Douglas fir (about 74 cubic feet).
• Wooden frames are present in 94 percent of all new homes.
• The average home contains about 13,000 board feet of framing lumber.
• Wood is a valuable resource. Mulch and fuel applications pay between $12 and $24 per ton. Salvaged or reused wood are the highest-valued items.
• Beyond typical household reuse, recycled wood can become a number of products, such as lumber, engineered wood products, mulch or compost feedstock, biomass fuel and other miscellaneous items such as animal bedding or wood flour.
• Beyond these uses, recycled wood products also provide an opportunity for your own creative expression, such as in crafts, furniture, art, toys, tools and construction.

Wood is the only 100 percent renewable, recyclable, reusable and biodegradable resource we have, making the stewardship of wood products an invaluable step in conserving resources.

Tips for Recycling Wood Products

For improvement projects around your home or office, green your wood use by looking for the following:

• Certified sustainable wood
• Composition woods or engineered wood products
• Salvaged, reclaimed or re-milled lumber
• Recycled content sheet goods, such as recycled newsprint, agricultural byproducts or wood waste
• Instead of installing hardwood floors, check out cork and bamboo, which grow faster than typical hardwood

By purchasing and utilizing products made from recycled or reclaimed wood products, not only do you prevent a valuable waste from entering landfills, but you also contribute to the demand for manufacturers to continue to produce these products.

Deconstruct With Care

An important consideration when recycling wood is the way in which you disassemble old wood products. Known as “deconstruction,” this process is defined as “a process to carefully dismantle or remove useable materials from structures, as an alternative to demolition. It maximizes the recovery of valuable building materials for reuse and recycling and minimizes the amount of waste land-filled.”

Be sure to carefully deconstruct any wood products you are looking to replace. By leaving them intact, you enable another person or organization to utilize your waste.