What We Do
Urban Wood Economy is a national nonprofit turning those costs into gains. Our entrepreneurial model is leveraging untapped opportunities to cut CO2 emissions and create jobs by bringing urban and community wood utilization to scale.
“Recovered wood is a cash crop. By forging links in the supply chain, we’re building economies, capturing carbon, creating jobs and transforming communities.”
Jeff Carroll | Co-Founder, Urban Wood Economy
Circumventing the landfill
When a tree in a city, town, neighborhood, or rural area—the wildland urban interface—comes down due to storm damage, age, disease, development or any number of other reasons, its fate is often the wood chipper or landfill. Instead, our model keeps this wood in circulation, providing value-added products and drastically reducing the release of carbon into the atmosphere.
Deconstruction, not demolition
We work with our community partners to turn the building rehab paradigm on its head. Our collaborative projects showcase the fact that reclamation is a better value than wholesale demolition. Deconstruction — where usable wood is harvested instead of thrown on the trash heap — can reduce costs without delaying tight schedules, and is a meaningful source of jobs.
From waste stream to supply chain
Trees removed from communities are taken out of the waste stream and placed into the supply chain through an aggregation process. Known as biomass campuses, these innovative, high-volume, zero-waste aggregation sites process every part of the tree from roots to leaves into one of three products:
High-Value Lumber
which is used by builders and other end users such as furniture manufacturers, architects, or artisans.
Biochar
a versatile carbon-based product that has many diverse uses, such as a soil amendment and water filtration.
Nutrient-rich Compost
which supports plant growth as nature’s fertilizer everywhere from organic backyard gardening to large-scale agriculture.
And…the cycle continues
We don’t stop when the dust settles. We connect organizations that are planting and maintaining trees in the same communities where we’re working. By doing so, we’re creating local and regional jobs, and building a restorative and regenerative cycle that benefits everyone.