More American Hardwood Now Than 50 Years Ago
American Hardwoods: Renewing, Abundant and Sustainable
American hardwoods have entered their fourth century of providing beauty and authenticity, warmth and integrity, lasting aesthetic and functional value to interiors. For floors, furniture, mouldings, millwork, cabinetry and built-ins, they are quintessentially green materials in abundant and self-renewing supply.
American hardwoods are sustainable solutions for eco-effective design and building:
- Harvesting levels are far below the levels of growth: Nearly twice as much hardwood grows each year as is harvested in the U.S. For this reason, the volume of hardwoods in American forests today is 90 percent larger than it was 50 years ago.
- Hardwood foresters follow professional best practices that mirror natural forces. Individual trees are selected for harvest, encouraging forests to renew and regenerate themselves naturally and prolifically.
- In addition to providing wildlife habitat and filtering the water supply, trees produce oxygen, remove carbon dioxide and store carbon, reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
- Virtually every part of the log is used as lumber or by-products, and finished products are re-useable, recyclable and biodegradable.
All hardwood forests in the continental United States are temperate-not tropical. They are home to the oaks, maples, cherry, ash, poplar and scores of other broad-leafed deciduous species, many of which grow nowhere else in the world. The term "hardwood" has no reference to the wood's actual hardness, which differs by species.
Unlike the area blanketed by the evergreen conifers (softwoods), most hardwood forestland is in the eastern half of the country. Hardwood forests cover 279 million acres: the equivalent of hardwood trees covering every square inch of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. This resource is neither scarce nor finite.
Collectively, across all hardwood trees in all American hardwood forests, there is nearly twice as much new wood growth as there is wood removed through harvesting. We are not running out of trees. The volume of hardwood in American forests is 352 billion cubic feet, and they are adding growth of 10.2 billion cubic feet a year. This compares to annual removal of 6 billion cubic feet.
"Sustainability" is meeting today's needs, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. With hardwood growth well exceeding removal, the U.S. supply of hardwoods for flooring, furniture, cabinetry and millwork is-by definition-sustainable now and for future generations.
Just as important, hardwoods are green design choices with the intrinsic beauty and versatility so lacking in recycled cartons, glued-up grass stalks and compressed grain husks.
