Thanks to all who have written asking for references of my posting of
yesterday. Sorry to say (and I should have said so in my original post)
that I received that post from a friend of mine who works for the USFS. He
received it through internal email, without attribution, and was only
passing it along to me. Therefore, I cannot offer a specific citation, and
can only refer you to the US Forest Service in Washington, DC for further
information.
By the way, I thought the biggest problem with the piece was the argument
that steel frames (for housing?) were inferior from a resource conservation
point of view because there was (alleged) higher energy inputs to making
the steel than in "harvesting"* the timber.
While this may or may not be true (and I think that in many cases it is
not, e.g. where "baby trees" are used for manufacturing wood products such
as oriented strand board, or where long transportation distances are
involved (e.g., importing tropical timber), the energy inputs may well be
much higher than locally-obtained steel), I feel that Doug missed the point
entirely about the question of conservation of natural resources and
reducing waste.
Steel is or can be 100% recycled, whereas very little if any
construction-grade wood is even reused a second time, and "recycled" wood
fiber is not used at all, to my knowledge, in applications where steel is.
Why do we in the U.S. make our homes out of highly flammable wood when we
forbid commercial establishments from using it? Fire safety, everyone
agrees, is important, but why does society allow our homes (where our
children sleep) to be unsafe, yet we require stringent fire code compliance
with businesses where no little kids sleep at night?
Just the musings on one point in Doug's essay, and of course any responses
are welcome...
David
* (NOTE: Let's only use the term "harvesting" for plantation-grown trees,
NOT for natural/native/ancient forests, which were never planted, they just
"occurred" without the assistance of professionals or anyone else. Let's
use the accurate term "logging" when we speak of cutting down trees).
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David G. Orr
R-4 Program Coordinator
Waste Prevention and Recycling
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Office of Environmental Services
University of California
Davis, CA 95616
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Internet: DGORR@UCDAVIS.EDU
Voice: (916) 752-6970 (o)
756-9540 (h)
FAX: 752-7456
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