My article in FDMC’s September issue — “Sobering wake-up call for furniture materials suppliers, manufacturers” — sparked a lot of conversation. The focus was telling a powerful, science-based story about sequestered carbon in forest products. 

We know that the carbon story of wood and wood-based products is unmatched by any material in the building products world. Measuring the carbon footprint of different products is the only way we have to truly compare their relative real-world impacts. 
We understand the role and impacts of carbon in our world. We can weigh it and track it as it cycles through the Earth’s crust, oceans, its atmosphere, its biomes. And we know that wood-based materials are the only building products that store more carbon than is released in converting them from forest fiber into finished products. 

But let’s face it. As important and positive as the forest-products carbon story is, not everyone finds it as riveting as do my webinar audiences of 300+ designers and architects. Some people even – gasp! – start to glaze over when I bring it up.

The great news is, our industry has another, even more universal science-based story to tell: sustainable forestry. 

Common sense forestry
Forestry management was common sense long before it was science. Through a series of recent conversations with an influential group of forward-thinking designers, architects and educators, I’ve learned that — as with the carbon sequestration story — the basic facts about sustainable forestry are not reaching this important audience. 

Last November I spent a day in a managed forest in northern Wisconsin, getting the first-hand look I needed to better inform the A&D educational projects I create about our industry and its products. 

Watching the harvester weave its way through the woods toward the next tagged tree whose time had come, I made the mistake of asking, “So how does replanting work?” The look back I got said, “Re-what?” I paused. He didn’t even look down before he started pointing, “That’s a sapling. That’s a sapling, that’s a sapling. We don’t have to do a thing.”

The next generation of this forest was already growing before this crew rolled in, a knee-high nursery stretching out in every direction. Managed forestry’s job is to clear the trees that would be dead by the next rotation, giving the young ones access to a critical resource: sunlight. The canopy, or overstory, created by aging, dead and low-value, fuel-prone trees deprives saplings of the energy they need to fully mature. 

Simply put, in many managed forests more trees naturally regenerate than are harvested. Replanting isn’t required to maintain forest health. I didn’t know this.

Lessons from the Menominee
One of the best managed forests in the world is run by Menominee Tribal Enterprises, not far from where I learned my replanting lesson. This forest produces lumber for basketball courts, cabinetry, millwork and pallets. 

“Our problem is that we can’t find enough people to help us manage it,” MTE’s Nels Huse told me last fall. “It’s a big challenge for us, because we have more trees now than we did in 1854.

“We’re working from the prescription written for us 170 years ago by Chief Oshkosh. And all he did was document what the Menominee Nation has been doing for generations, as long as memory.”

THIS is how you start the conversation with architects and designers.

It was Chief Oshkosh’s “prescription” for nurturing healthy forests for future generations that resonated most powerfully with the architects and designers I’ve been working with:

“Start with the rising sun and work toward the setting sun, but take only the mature trees, the sick trees, and the trees that have fallen. When you reach the end of the reservation, turn and cut from the setting sun to the rising sun, and the trees will last forever.”

This simple philosophy leads to healthier, more productive forests generation after generation. Forests left to grow willy nilly, without any management mechanism like harvests or fires, will literally become scrub forests with skinny, sickly trees and a riot of gnarly undergrowth that wildlife will avoid. 

That’s another thing I didn’t know. 

This sizes up a big part of our challenge. In a brief chat with the guy driving the log hauler he perfectly captured Oshkosh’s spirit in his own words, more deftly than I’ve ever heard. (What a time to not have my tape recorder running.) Then he looks over at me and says, “But everybody knows this, right?”

No, they absolutely do not. 

Deforestation concerns
As a matter of fact, when asked about managed forestry in North America, many A&D types will describe deforestation nightmares common in Sri Lanka, but rare or nonexistent here. Last year one of the major news magazines ran an article equating all harvests for the building industry with literal deforestation. (For the record, deforestation is the opposite of managed forestry.) 

I need you to work with me on this. We have an incredible opportunity to start a conversation with the design community, who in turn will help us share our story with consumers. It covers all forest products — solid wood, composite wood, even paper-based laminates like HPL and TFL. 

One big challenge I face is, while many materials producers understand the value of sharing their stories with A&D specifiers, there’s a missing link. If furniture and millwork producers are not telling the same forestry and carbon sequestration stories to their customers, they’ll be lost in the noise of disinformation. 

I’d love your thoughts on this. Please share with me your questions, challenges and success stories. Real forestry management is about more than hugging trees. It’s about hugging the whole forest. 

Taking our message to NeoCon
Several of our industry’s leading materials suppliers will be joining me this year at North America’s most important tradeshow for commercial A&D design and specification — NeoCon, in Chicago, June 10-13. I’ve invited them to be part of a curated area called the Climate Positive Solutions Gallery, an educational installation situated in the heart of the event. 

From past experience with NeoCon projects, I know we’ll be having hundreds of conversations with specifiers looking to solve their materials and sustainability challenges. I also know that as much as we’ll be teaching them about wood-based materials and related technologies, we’ll be learning even more about how we need to tell them our story.