What Does Sustainably Harvested Wood Even Mean?
In the sense of harvesting wood, sustainable can simply mean making the most out of a resource without doing damage to said resource. On the other end of the spectrum, being unsustainable when harvesting wood, you would walk out to the woods cut down a fresh tree that has nothing wrong with it and be done with it. You might even use just some of it instead of every little bit. This is considered wasteful as it damages a growing resource that takes time to be produced. Then to make it worse, you don't even use all of it...
When sustainably harvesting wood we find trees that are already down. These could have fallen in a storm, been pruned, or fallen ill to some bacteria or disease. They were going to be thrown away, turned into wood chips, or left to rot. This does no damage to an existing resource and makes use of something that would have gone to waste.
Responsibility
There is care and a sense of responsibility that needs to go into using a natural resource for building, food, or fuel. It is there for us to use, but we need to take this seriously. We need not take more than we need or let things go to waste. Even though this is the culture that we seem to live in currently, it isn't how things always were. Life wasn't all about consumption.
It Won't Always be Perfect
This is part of the reason that we use sustainably harvested wood for all of our eating utensils, bowls, and bud vases. We want to practice this discipline, but also show others that it can be done. We want to get back to the roots of respecting what nature provides to create something beautiful. Will everything be perfect and symmetrical, more than likely not. Nature doesn't grow in a straight line.
As our mission says "From Nothing to Something".
In addition, we take pride in trying to add back to that resource. This is why we partner with Ecologi to help plant trees with every purchase. This is a great way of practicing sustainability, by actively adding back to what is taken. There is an exchange that has to happen, and this is a great way to exercise that.
Shop Sustainable
There are so many amazing products and works of art out there, but please consider how it is resourced. It's important to support sustainability so that pieces of art can continue to be made and nature can thrive. Plus, ya know we can't live without it!
Closing
To close, thank you for reading! This is the first blog of many on the topics of woodworking, wood carving, wood turning, and of course conservation/sustainability. Make sure to subscribe if this is something you want to be notified of going into the future!
-Blake