Entrepreneurs log the unwanted urban forest

Donald "Stubby" Warmbold remembers the day he saw a 100-year-old oak tree cut into 12-inch lengths of firewood. A new homeowner in suburban Mercer County, N.J., wanted to expand a driveway, so the tree had to go.
Logs from urban areas are often dumped, not recycled. Logs from urban areas are often dumped, not recycled.
By Don Heupel, AP

"It was a beautiful, beautiful red oak," says Mr. Warmbold, who had recently lost a lucrative telephone polemaking business because new environmental laws had reduced his lumber supply.

"That’s a waste," he recalls thinking. "That’s when the little light bulb went on."

Warmbold realized the tree could have been put to better use. Such high-quality wood could be turned into furniture or flooring or, at the very least, park benches.

Traditionally, urban trees chopped down because of disease, age, or development have been sent to the dump. But increasingly, entrepreneurs and small businesses are identifying ways to more constructively use the estimated 3.8 billion board feet of timber — about 25% of the annual hardwood lumber production in the United States every year — that is removed from cities and suburbs annually. That’s roughly enough wood to build about 275,000 new homes, and only a small fraction is now recycled.

By Aaron Clark, Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-12-20-urban-timber_x.htm