Consumption, resources, and the environment: What you need to know.

If you have read my last post regarding how we know that the wood we use is getting sourced from a reliable place and if the wood is the right material for us this post will help you make that decision. Wood is a wonderful material with thousands of uses and is overall seemingly sustainable for the environment. However, what are the specific advantages, disadvantages, and indifferent ideas about accessing wood in this world?  Let's start this discussion with the advantages of using wood. The first thing about wood that most people know is how versatile it can be. You can use it for furniture, building, fuel, paper, and so many other things (lesson 13). It is also always evolving and there are always new things that you can do with wood. It can be modified to fit the needs of the consumer with products like plywood or fiberboard (lesson 15). This is very good because it can eliminate other products such as cement and steel. Another benefit of wood is its property called carbon neutr...

Trees are everywhere. They are found in 2.3 billion acres of land throughout the United States in areas such as;  parks, stores, and our front yards, nearly anywhere outside (lesson 9). So are they our key to a sustainable future? Are there really better ways that we can harvest trees? Trees can be a phenomenal sustainable energy source as they are so common. They can be used for items such as housing, furniture, tools, energy, and many other things (lesson 8). The question isn't whether they are useful or not, it is if it's worth it. The manufacturing process of trees into whatever the product is has many steps that should be evaluated to determine their sustainability. This process is heavily dependent on machinery, which is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. The process also greatly depends on the type of forest the trees are coming from. There are two main types of harvesting lands that trees mainly come from. Natural forests occur without huge amounts of human interaction ...