Think about two vehicles passing on a metropolis avenue. One is a supply truck carrying new wooden flooring and furnishings to shops and houses within the metropolis. The opposite is carrying a fallen metropolis tree broken by a latest storm, taking it out of city to be mulched, burned or despatched to a landfill.
This situation performs out each day in city communities around the globe and represents an enormous, missed alternative for cities, shoppers and the local weather. Timber supply numerous advantages for cities, but 36 million bushes come down in cities throughout the USA every year attributable to illness, improvement or outdated age. A lot of this wooden finally ends up burned, chipped into mulch or tossed into landfills, regardless of its potential to grow to be a beneficial product.
The “reforestation hubs” mannequin permits cities to create new worth from fallen city bushes. Somewhat than persevering with business-as-usual city wooden waste, cities can assist get well and “upcycle” that waste into higher-value merchandise such furnishings, flooring and building materials. The income that’s generated from the sale of these gadgets and the lowered value of wooden waste disposal can then funnel again into city forestry initiatives, reminiscent of planting new bushes or sustaining present bushes.
New case research by Cambium Carbon and the Arbor Day Basis present that there’s a substantial city wooden re-use alternative in three main U.S. cities which can be a part of the Cities4Forests community. If cities seize the chance to construct a wooden reuse market, they’ll lower your expenses, present new assets for city forest restoration and see vital local weather advantages.
Salvaging wooden waste from Pittsburgh
Nested alongside steep hillsides vulnerable to erosion, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is on a mission to revive its degraded landscapes. The town hopes to plant 100,000 bushes by 2030 and fight a 6.2 p.c tree cover decline from 2010 to 2015.
Pittsburgh’s tree loss has affected the town in numerous methods. In 2020 alone, Pittsburgh eliminated greater than 1,300 bushes from public land at a price of roughly $27 per ton for contracted disposal. Timber are sometimes eliminated in two- to three-foot sections, with smaller-diameter limbs and brush floor up for mulch, compost or boiler gas. This course of releases the carbon saved in bushes again into the ambiance. And along with the price of disposal, the town loses an estimated $250,000 yearly from the unrealized financial worth of the fabric.
Recycling fallen wooden from Brooklyn and Queens alone might present a internet current worth of $7 million over 10 years.
Wooden waste use presents a chance for the town to chop prices, meet its city forestry objective and enhance materials effectivity. The examine identifies alternatives for the town to make use of its wooden waste stream to make merchandise obligatory for brand spanking new planting, reminiscent of tree stakes or mulch. Whereas the town’s present contract for wooden waste administration entitles it to a portion of completed mulch or compost, little or no of that materials is claimed in observe. This is because of gaps in communication between disposal and new procurement, in addition to present mulch not being floor to the specs required for reuse. Returning the town’s personal wooden waste to the panorama cannot solely advance zero waste initiatives, however assist the town keep away from new procurement prices. This is able to unencumber the vital city forestry finances wanted to take care of and restore the town’s tree cover.
Catalyzing a wooden waste economic system in Eugene
Eugene, Oregon’s wealthy legacy as a regional middle for forest product manufacturing supplies a novel alternative for the town to create a industrial marketplace for salvaged wooden and get fallen logs into the fingers of native processors. The town eliminated roughly 1,000 bushes in 2020, which contained as a lot as 50,000 board ft of merchantable wooden. That’s sufficient materials to stretch an entire mile lengthy and nearly 10 ft throughout with one-inch slabs of wooden. On the similar time, the crew behind the examine recognized 76 wooden millers, secondary wooden product producers and potential consumers within the space who might make a market from this wooden.
Cities want mounted infrastructure to course of and up-cycle city wooden. Due to this fact, the examine recommends utilizing a shared sorting yard to mixture logs from sources reminiscent of metropolis crews, tree care corporations and the native electrical utility. In flip, a public-private partnership — reminiscent of a mannequin pioneered in Eau Claire, Wisconsin by the nonprofit Wisconsin City Wooden — might allow native sawyers and millers to make use of and course of the fabric by their present services. Eugene’s legacy as a logging city additionally affords the non-public sector capability and significant experience wanted to mill, dry and promote recycled wooden as merchandise reminiscent of tables, furnishings or flooring. This makes a compelling case for the town to collaborate with native artisans and producers, somewhat than oversee its personal processing infrastructure.
Centralizing New York Metropolis’s wooden waste processing
Between 2015 and 2020, New York Metropolis eliminated a median of over 12,000 avenue and park bushes every year. Most tree materials was chipped on website, permitting for simpler transportation and disposal exterior of the congested city setting. The town additionally has a decentralized city forestry system wherein every of the 5 boroughs operates its personal forestry crew. This largely siloed method makes it much more difficult to handle a large wooden waste stream.
Waste administration prices additionally pose a significant problem. With actual property and transit at a premium, the fee to have wooden waste hauled and disposed — often called a “tipping charge” — could be as much as $70 a ton. These prices could be considerably elevated after extreme storm occasions: 2020’s Hurricane Isaias downed practically 3,400 bushes in New York Metropolis parks, resulting in a invoice of greater than $1.5 million for the town’s wooden waste administration that yr.
Cities want mounted infrastructure to course of and up-cycle city wooden.
The case examine discovered that establishing a centralized sorting and processing operation to recycle fallen wooden from Brooklyn and Queens alone might present a internet current worth of $7 million over 10 years along with financial savings from averted disposal charges. A reuse program inside the metropolis might additionally keep away from vital transportation and disposal emissions, as the town would now not should truck waste exterior of the town and state. Moreover, native processing would enable for carbon storage in sturdy wooden merchandise, a lot of which might in any other case be launched throughout burning, mulching and decomposition. Along with lowered transportation emissions, the examine estimates that over 10,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions could be lowered by a pilot wooden reuse program by carbon storage alone.
Scaling the city wooden alternative
The city wooden alternative shouldn’t be restricted to those three cities. Whereas particular wooden waste administration methods will fluctuate in response to native context, these new assessments can assist establish finest practices for peer cities seeking to profit from their fallen bushes.
For instance, cities can create unified asset administration programs for tree information. All three cities had a problem with fragmented data administration, as numerous businesses (reminiscent of planning and zoning, public works, and branches of parks and recreation) stored separate tree data. In consequence, tree removals weren’t measured or managed in a cohesive trend. Different cities might be able to set up centralized log assortment infrastructure, as pioneered by Baltimore. Different cities, together with members of Cities4Forests, might want to revise insurance policies, reminiscent of setting new contractor necessities for disposal or establishing a neighborhood desire for metropolis procurement.
No matter subsequent steps, one factor is obvious: Cities have rather a lot to achieve from seizing the worth of their fallen bushes. Whereas these case research present three fashions for wooden reuse, it’s as much as authorities leaders throughout the nation to develop full life cycle administration methods for metropolis bushes and uncover how reforestation hubs can profit their communities.
