Western Business: Small-time foresters band together to go green
OAKVILLE, Wash. -- John Henrikson logs his own land, downing the worst wood first and letting the best stuff keep growing.
There are tall, thick alders and gargantuan maples that could line his pockets handsomely, but he leaves most of them standing - chopping down only the ones nearing the end of their life span.
"I'm not going to touch this," he said, admiring one of the red alders on his 100 acres in this tiny town south of the Capitol Forest. "This is an unbelievably healthy tree."
Like many small forest owners who want to treat their land well, he's thought about trying to get "green certification" through the environmentally strict Forest Stewardship Council.
But he can't afford it. It can cost thousands of dollars just to get a tract of land checked out.
Soon, though, Henrikson and several other Western Washington forest owners will band together to get certified as a group. At most a five-year contract will cost him $1,000, and he won't have to worry about the hardest part: marketing his eco-friendly wood to mills.
"This is a good opportunity for me," Henrikson said. "The alternative prior to this was doing it on my own, which would be too expensive and a difficult process trying to figure out by myself."
Richard Pine, part owner of a Salem, Ore.-based timber company, decided to go it alone and get his 2,200 acres in Lewis and Thurston counties green-certified in 1999. It has cost him close to $11,000. But as a charter member of the nonprofit Northwest Natural Resource Group, Pine expects to pay about half that over the next five years.
Henrikson, Pine and other landowners aren't expecting to make a quick buck because most mills aren't yet clamoring for more green-certified wood. They see green certification as more of a rewarding seal of approval for the extra care they take logging their land than any sure economic bet.
"Making forestry profitable is a lot tougher than it used to be, but this program gives landowners a new opportunity to connect with consumers that value their work," said Ian Hanna, who will run the group certification program when it launches early next year.
Green certification is an emerging market that's gaining the most ground in cities and states like Seattle and Washington that encourage environmentally sound building techniques for big public projects.
Major retailers including Home Depot and Lowe's have buying policies that favor certified wood. Most of the flooring Starbucks now buys is green certified, and do-it-yourself furniture retailer IKEA is a big buyer, said Michael Washburn, vice president of forestry and marketing for the U.S. chapter of FSC, a global nonprofit based in Bonn, Germany.
If you're a homeowner looking to build a deck, though, you're not likely to find a neat stack of certified 2-by-4s at the local lumber yard. In most cases, customers have to special-order the wood. Sometimes it doesn't cost any more than noncertified wood, but most often it's around 10 percent more expensive, industry experts say.
Most consumers aren't willing to both wait and pay more just for a guarantee that trees were cut in ways that don't pollute streams or degrade wildlife habitat, said Ron Jarvis, Home Depot's merchandising vice president.
"The average consumer's a pocketbook environmentalist," Jarvis said. "They want to do the right thing until it hits their pocketbook."
Continue reading this story from the Seattle P-I
Western Business: Small-time foresters band together to go green
To learn more about FSC certified wood, please visit Earth Share of Washington organization Washington Environmental Council - www.wecprotects.org.