Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
How We Pioneered New National Standards | Jennifer Alger from Wood-Mizer & Far West Forest Products
12 Plays1 year ago
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Jennifer Alger, a true disruptor in the wood industry.
In this interview, we delve into Jennifer's remarkable journey of transforming discarded urban wood into valuable resources and pioneering new national standards that challenge the status quo.
Her story is a testament to the power of persistence and collaboration in driving positive change.
Discover the insights and inspiration that come from a career dedicated to reshaping an industry that many believed couldn't change.
---
https://farwestforest.com/
https://urbanwoodnetwork.org/
https://www.usrwcertified.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Jennifer Alger and Urban Wood Industry
00:00:00
Speaker
People who really thought what we were doing was evil. I would tell how this wood was rescued, how it was storing carbon, how it was helping the environment, helping local economies. These trees were not harvested for their timber value.
00:00:13
Speaker
Today we have Jennifer Alger with us, a visionary in the realm of urban wood. As president of Far West Forest Products and Woodmizer California, Jennifer has been in the business of salvaging urban wood for over 25 years, and she's a leading force in the formation of new nationwide standards for urban and salvage timber use. Her latest projects include innovative inventory management systems like Ancestry,
00:00:36
Speaker
and the USRW Certified Urban Wood Store in Northern California. We sat down with her to get her insights on promoting sustainability and business growth in the urban lumber sector and the exciting opportunities she envisions nationwide.
00:00:50
Speaker
Welcome. I am Vadim and I'm your host today.
Jennifer's Early Days and Transition to Urban Wood
00:00:53
Speaker
We today have Jennifer from Far West Forest Products with us today and my co-host, Jake. So excited to have you both here today. I would like to dive in and learn more about Jennifer, your different experiences, things that you're involved in and dive into the world of wood from your perspective. This is a, Jennifer is a mutual friend. So I'd like you to maybe share a little bit about how you guys met.
00:01:20
Speaker
Well, let's see I I Started working at Woodmizer back in 2011. I was hired in my first project I was living on the west coast and so we went to the organ logging conference together my boss in Indiana and
00:01:35
Speaker
marketing manager there at Wood-Mizer says, you're going to go hang out with Jennifer for a weekend. You're going to learn a lot about sawmill. So that was, that was how we met. I was, uh, it was like 12, 13 years ago. And, um, then throughout the years, I mean, Jennifer is, um, a, uh, ASC and basically a distributor for Wood-Mizer in California.
Environmental and Marketing Aspects of Urban Wood
00:01:59
Speaker
And so, you know, we worked together quite a bit, um, as I'm in marketing and
00:02:05
Speaker
and she was one of our distributors. That's incredible. Jennifer, could you share a little bit about your background and kind of how you got to where you are today? Well, I grew up in a traditional wood industry family and my dad was in the commercial timber falling industry in California, kind of took a dive in the 80s and
00:02:31
Speaker
In 1983, he formed a company and all of his kids right there with him helping. He formed a company called Far West Forest Products. In the 90s, I started to take over the management of a company, specifically the marketing of a company.
00:02:52
Speaker
And things had changed so much. Woodmizer had asked us to represent them as Woodmizer products for California and Nevada. And so we had done that. But we were also, because we were running a mill, and so we were producing lumber. We were producing wood products.
00:03:14
Speaker
And so I put my marketing hat on and I'm like, boy, what differentiates us? What makes us different from other people running, you know, running wood mazos, selling lumber and doing these types of things. And, um, coming from a traditional wood world in California in the eighties, we, we got a lot of
00:03:35
Speaker
people who really thought what we were doing was evil. You're destroying the environment, you're killing trees, all of these things. And so I started to learn about wood and how beneficial trees are for humans, for the environment, for societies, for economies. But then I also learned how good wood is
00:04:03
Speaker
in building properties and how it's one of the most sustainable, reliable products that there is. And it's regenerative. And all of these other building materials cannot say that. But then I looked at what I'm looking at specifically, what does far west do?
Urban Wood's Role in Construction and Design
00:04:22
Speaker
I realized that far west is using woods that are
00:04:29
Speaker
They come from an urban environment. They're salvaged. So forest salvage, maybe it's a gas or power line cut for right-of-ways or fire prevention mitigation.
00:04:44
Speaker
you know, that wildland interface area where, where, you know, fire might get a little too close to an urban environment and those were being removed and then deconstruction. And so, you know, deconstructed materials. So we were working with three different main types of woods and I thought, well,
00:05:03
Speaker
That's my marketing thing. These woods would have gone into the waste stream, had they not been salvaged. And one of the things that a lot of people don't know is that if it decomposes, that carving is emitted into the atmosphere. That's most people's concern with wood utilization, that and that the trees aren't there anymore. But these trees were not harvested for their timber value, very down anyways.
00:05:31
Speaker
So, if we can stop that decomposition process, if we can stop these from burning, that carbon is literally locked inside that wood. And so, I was thinking about it and I'm like, oh my goodness.
00:05:46
Speaker
We were criticized as kids for the industry that we were in in California, but what we're doing is beautiful. What we're doing is actually benefiting the environment. I decided to stop marketing that and I decided
00:06:04
Speaker
It was such a new concept, even though we had been doing it all along. That's where we were getting our wood most of this time. But I decided that we needed to market this and we needed to brand this and I couldn't do it alone. And so I literally began to train my competition.
00:06:24
Speaker
So that was my next, my next thing was to go, okay, how many more people can I bring into this? So that, you know, my, my way of thinking was, you know, everybody knows that they need all, you know, certain types of products, but this is such a unique product that if I'll bring
00:06:39
Speaker
a team to the table to market it, we're never going to compete with the traditional timber industry. In so many ways, we partner with the traditional timber industry, so it's not like we're at odds with them.
00:06:56
Speaker
but then we're able to go, okay, wood, when can we use wood in buildings? I know now it's timber, they're starting to look at wasting that and even bringing urban wood into that. How can we offset some of the other building materials that we're using now? Concrete, steel, other things. Then in design, even plastics come into that.
00:07:20
Speaker
That's incredible. Thanks for the quick glimpse and the quick synopsis of your story. I guess to begin, can I ask you a really fundamental question? What is urban wood and how do you define that?
00:07:32
Speaker
So urban wood is any wood that was not harvested for its timber value. That's primary. And it can come from a couple of different sources. It can come from an urban environment, like our urban city trees, when those need to be removed, and they all do. Everything has a life cycle. They can come from salvaged trees, like, you know, along our highways. And urban wood can come from deconstruction, you know, deconstruction of repurposed buildings.
The Urban Wood Network and Standardization Efforts
00:07:59
Speaker
All right. So we've discussed Far West Forest products, which is your family owned sawmill. Correct. Yes. Sawmill and lumber company. Correct. Right. And then you're also a distributor and do customer service, et cetera, for Woodmizer. So as Woodmizer, California. Correct. Right. And then there's a little thing called the Urban Wood Network. Can you give us a brief overview of what that is?
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah, so the Urban Wood Network is something that, to back up, I was saying a moment ago that I knew I couldn't do this alone. I needed to bring in people who could build this brand with me. And so I networked informally for decades. I networked with other people who, you know,
00:08:51
Speaker
this person has a sawmill. Okay, let's talk about recycling these urban trees. And so I would train them and network informally and put together arborists with sawmill owners with cities who had trees coming out and just really connecting all those dots and working a lot with CAL FIRE's urban and community forestry program.
00:09:16
Speaker
and Sacramento Urban Tree Foundation, or Tree Rescue, and California Urban Forest Councils. And so just working with all these organizations to repurpose this wood. And so then in, I think 2016,
00:09:35
Speaker
I formed a nonprofit, Friendly Califers, like, okay, we can help more with this, but you're going to need a nonprofit. We need to formally network and put some structure to this. I formed Urban Salvaged and Reclaimed Woods Inc. and started to formally network, bringing in members and connecting all the pieces of the supply chain so that we could build a brand around this thing called Urban Woods.
00:10:03
Speaker
And so what does that look like now, the Urban Wood Network? Well, that was Urban Salvation and Recurrent Woods Inc. And so then, you know, I looked out and I started noticing that I started noticing that there's these other networks, these other organizations around the nation. I think Woodweiser sent me, it was you actually, Jake.
00:10:26
Speaker
Sydney to Georgia, I don't remember who it was, but Sydney to Georgia to talk about urban wood. And so I was doing a presentation on urban wood and I met Joe Laneon from Virginia Department of Forestry. I met Rick Seaworth from Wood from the Hood in Minneapolis. I met Dwayne Sperber from Woodward.
00:10:52
Speaker
So I'm meeting all these people, you know, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Michigan, Virginia, some people in Baltimore. I'm meeting these people. I'm going, right. They're doing the same thing I'm doing. And it was so exciting. And so we started kind of putting our heads together and going, okay, we're really going to build a brand. We need to do it together. Not all these little packet organizations around the nation.
00:11:18
Speaker
We need to pull our resources and really build a brand, one umbrella, one forward phase to the world. In 2019, we all met together. We started writing standards for Urban Wood while we were forming this network.
00:11:39
Speaker
And so we all met in Wisconsin, kind of locked ourselves in a, you know, in the hotel lobby for three days, you know, all these different minds from all over the nation who were working in urban wood going, how do we get this right? And we came up with was, you know, we knew we needed a brand. What will that brand be?
00:12:02
Speaker
that we knew we needed to keep the standards and what would that grant be. And so what we came up with was the Irby Wood Network was a, it wasn't even a nonprofit at the time, it was this group of four states who were kind of working together and then all these other pocket groups were doing their own thing and we decided
00:12:25
Speaker
Let's take that Urban Wood Network, which was just a program, a US Forest Service funded program. Let's take that. That'll be our brand. That'll be our name and our network. But let's take the standards for the Urban Salvaged Reclaimed Woods and let's brand those US RW certified Urban Woods.
00:12:47
Speaker
and they'll work together. And that way we're not getting confused between the two, but knowing that they're affiliated, that they work together. So now the network is Urban Wood Network. Before I even formed the formal networks, the formal nonprofit, I was going out and I was really trying to market
00:13:13
Speaker
You know, I was pulling it all, you know, training our competition, bringing them in, you know, 15, 20 different people who have these great wood products. And we were trying to get them into, um, into mid-size lumber stores here in Northern California. Uh, we were trying to get, uh, urban woods specified on, on, uh,
00:13:35
Speaker
on plants, actually calling out urban wood in a build, getting general contractors to use that from the ground up with urban wood. I would tell the backstory. I would tell how this wood was rescued, how it literally was pulled out of the landfills in many cases, how it was storing carbon, helping the environment, helping local economies, helping families.
00:14:03
Speaker
And I would tell that story, and they're all so excited, and they're ready to go with it. And then they'd go, ooh, but is it FSC certified? Is it SFI certified? How do we know it's really urban wood? How do we know the history of this wood? How do we know it's chain of custody?
00:14:27
Speaker
And then the architects, if we build it, or if we specify it, not only does it, we're not seeing any certification, it's how do we know we're going to find it? Because most urban wood producers are these smaller, segregated operations that can produce 1,000
00:14:48
Speaker
board foot here, 20,000 board foot there, or 50,000 here. But people are used to dealing with very large lumber companies when they're dealing with the what. And so I realized that
00:15:05
Speaker
Oh, and then there was the thing of, oh, well, we tried urban wood once and we bought it and realized it started to move on us. You know, it wasn't properly dry. And not only did it move because of moisture content, it began to moving raw.
00:15:20
Speaker
because nobody sterilized it. And so things were literally coming out of some of the wood, and these people were telling. And so I'm like, well, OK, those people have not been educated. So one of the things our network needs to do is education.
00:15:36
Speaker
proper drying, proper treatment, you know, get rid of all the wood destroying organisms and how to do that. So they needed some education that they needed a standard. And so that's how the standards came about. And I realized that if we were going to take this to the next level instead of this niche boutique size industry, we were going to need to set some standards. We were going to have to have
00:16:01
Speaker
Sourcing standards, we're going to have to have a chain of custody to be able to track that, yes, this did indeed come from urban wood. Track the reason it was removed too because
00:16:16
Speaker
People were really concerned when they started to see urban wood be used. It's like, wait a second. Oh yeah, that all sounds great. But does that mean you're going to go out and just start pulling all the trees in our parks and our city streets? You know what? What parameters are going to be there to protect the living trees and make sure you're only getting
00:16:35
Speaker
the trees that are coming to the end of their life were life cycle, hazard trees, fallen trees, and those types of things.
Architectural Interest and Biophilic Design with Urban Wood
00:16:41
Speaker
And so we had to put standards in place to kind of protect against that. And so we wrote standards
00:16:50
Speaker
with Katrina custody that showed the arborist, the Sawyer, the hauler, and the kill the operator if they're going to sterilize it, showed each of those pieces of the process with a standard to track, very similar to FSC or SFI. And as a matter of fact, and lead USGBC
00:17:18
Speaker
the Green Building Council and their LEED certification. So we wrote these standards that fit into all that as the answer to what the architects and the wood stores said that they needed in order to get our product used on a larger scale. But one of the things that as we developed these standards,
00:17:43
Speaker
uh, we started to, uh, we were like, okay, well, we don't want to compete against FSC. We don't want to compete against SFI. So we wrote them and then we, um, hired, hired an entity to go in who had a lot of experience with other traditional standards and look at how we, how we compared to lead certification, how we met and exceeded the standards for very high
00:18:11
Speaker
lead certification scores, how we met and exceeded the FSC certification.
00:18:17
Speaker
and how we met and exceeded the SFI certification just using a different source. Since we couldn't get into their programs, we decided to look at their programs and develop something that worked for us that aligned with their programs. And so we have an attachment so that should FSC or SFI or any of the other organizations want to take a look at Urban Wood, we have a platform ready for that to just introduce right into what they're doing or integrate rather.
00:18:48
Speaker
That's pretty incredible. Jennifer, so can I ask, how has the before and after having the certification changed the landscape? Well, we are piloting the certification right now.
00:19:02
Speaker
What it has done is opened the doors, even though we don't have, we only have a few very small groups actually certifying to the standards right now. We're piloting at all larger scale and so a lot of architects, a lot of
00:19:18
Speaker
designers, builders, and stores are really starting to take notice and they're asking how they can get involved and how they can have a US RW certified project where they're specifying this certified wood. But remember, they have the question about, so where do we find it if we do it? And then the soilers were a little scared of certification because they're going, okay,
00:19:47
Speaker
paperwork, am I going to have a stack of paperwork as high as my desk? There were some concerns about it, but we found solutions for those as well. That's pretty incredible. Troy, can we spend a little bit on what architects and engineers are looking for when they're coming to you? What are their needs? What kind of projects are we talking about? Can we hear some examples maybe along those lines?
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We partnered with an entity out of Wisconsin, Woodward Urban Forest Products, and we did a forest service funded listening sessions and some Q&A and really did some research to find out what architects and specifiers needed. We brought in large furniture, like national brand furniture makers,
00:20:38
Speaker
into these listening sessions. We brought decision makers for large campuses and hospitals, architects, designers, builders, general contractors into these sessions. And we did some research and we brought
00:20:59
Speaker
Oh, gosh. I can't remember. Not a psychiatrist, but they studied the psychiatry around using wood. So you're getting into the biophilic design and looking for those types of things. And sustainable's been a big buzzword. Now they're moving from sustainable to it doesn't just need to be sustainable. It needs to be regenerative. So they're looking for regenerative projects. They're looking to keep their costs down.
00:21:26
Speaker
while having a regenerative product that makes people psychologically feel good, bringing in that biophilic design that makes people happy when they're there, but that they can do affordably and beautifully and be able to find enough product. Some of the projects that have come to us have been
00:21:52
Speaker
with one of the Google buildings going into California. They were specifying, and they had very specific guidelines. They wanted wood that was salvaged, whether it was urban, whether it was forest salvaged, they weren't specific, but they needed something that was not harvested for its timber value for their builds. The
00:22:14
Speaker
event that I was talking about in Wisconsin, we had Architects Institute of America come in and we did some Q&A questions. And so they're looking for all of the things that I just stated, but they're also wanting to know how can we find them? How can you aggregate the inventory? So if we specify them, we can actually pull them together.
00:22:36
Speaker
yeah absolutely but like specifically how would the wood be used is it structural is it furniture is it cabinetry where exactly
00:22:45
Speaker
Got it, got it. So urban wood would have to, if it was structural, it would need to be graded in most places in the United States. And so some of it can be structural, but really more one-off type of things. We would have to have a transient. Grados come out, grade the product, because no urban wood facility at this time has an on-site grader. So that would need to be graded. So most of it is going into more of the architectural mill work.
00:23:14
Speaker
the flooring, the ceiling applications, the flooring, decking, siding, big beams. I mean, we've done some large projects. We put together a timber package for one of Patagonia's builds, one of their big retail stores, and that was all out of out of salvaged
00:23:37
Speaker
pine timbers that had died due to drought and beetle infestation here in Northern California. So that was structural, but timber frame has different grading rules, and so we were able to use that for those.
00:23:54
Speaker
That's incredible. And when you talk about the biophilic, the way it makes you seal, there's definitely this presence when you walk into a store or you walk into a lobby and it's not just concrete and steel. What about wood makes it feel different?
00:24:10
Speaker
I think it's because it was a living. It's war. It was a living tree. It was part of life. We're alive. The tree was alive. And they've done studies. It literally lowers your blood pressure when you're in a room with wood, with plants, with things that have been alive or are still alive.
Technology and Tools in Urban Wood Management
00:24:34
Speaker
And they've done studies, kids who
00:24:39
Speaker
are in some form of nature in the built environment, do better on tests, less anger, less crime, a higher percentage of kids graduating from schools. And that's one of the reason that the Forest Service and different groups here in the United States, one of the reasons that they're working so hard to bring trees into inner cities is to help
00:25:07
Speaker
balance that. Some of the kids, if concrete's all they see, they're not getting the benefits that a kid who's growing up in the country or in a more rural environment of getting with nature. Bringing that nature into the cities, we can't all live in the country,
00:25:23
Speaker
So let's bring the nature in. Let's, let's, you know, a plant. I see you both have plants in your, in your offices. That's, that's part of it, you know, the plant, but also, also the things that are, that are, you know, what's our desk made of, what's our cabinetry or window casings. So a lot of different uses.
00:25:41
Speaker
So I guess the follow-up question to that is, as the urban wood network is growing and gaining momentum, can you explain how this network is collaborating to promote the urban utilization more so, and what role does it play in a broader industry landscape?
00:25:58
Speaker
So it's it's connecting all the pieces of the supply chain and I've been having a brand that we can put out there, you know, we we Go to different conferences and just educate most cities are looking for climate solutions I you know, they have climate goals that they have to meet they have to resume reduce their carbon emissions and and so what we're able to do is provide a
00:26:24
Speaker
solutions to help them do that. And Urban Wood is a carbon storage vehicle. It's a tool that we can use. And so then one of the things that I do is I provide a various range of tools to be able to help them do that. And the Urban Wood Network is one of those tools, is a network for education and connection, the standards for making sure it's done
00:26:50
Speaker
a certain way. We provide saw melts to be able to mill the wood. If it's not milled, you can't keep that carving captured because it'll just begin to decompose. And then kilns to dry the product. So all these different pieces of the puzzle. And then I'd mentioned before, one of the things that
00:27:21
Speaker
The architects and the specifiers kept asking us, where will we find the wood? You know, how will we find all the different pieces? How will we find the people who are milling wood according to these standards?
00:27:34
Speaker
And then the people making the wood that caught their stack of paperwork, they're going, OK, how do we easily follow these standards? And I'm opening a store and have got 20 different suppliers bringing wood in. How am I going to manage your inventory? How am I going to know?
00:27:57
Speaker
what I've got. And one of the things that people love when they buy Far West Forest Products wood or any urban wood, professionals would, one of the things that they love is that backstory, telling the story of where this wood came from, what it's doing for the environment and the economy and the families.
00:28:16
Speaker
and the history of the blood. And so we had to come up with a solution for that. And so we developed an inventory management app, a system that pools everything together in one nice, easy place. So we're using technology to
00:28:36
Speaker
pull all the pieces of the puzzle together. It's got an
Entrepreneurial Challenges and Solutions in Urban Wood
00:28:40
Speaker
urban lumber market that's going to operate in an Amazon style shopping experience where all these different suppliers can have their list what products they have, how many board feet, is it quarter sawn?
00:28:55
Speaker
white oak is it, you know, is it four quarters, six quarters, you know, and aggregate all that together. So those architects, designers and specifiers are going to go, Oh, okay. Well, I need, I need 200,000 board feet of four quarter, you know, rifts on white oak for, you know, for flooring, for, for these cafes or whatever it is, you know, and they'll be able to pull that together and find that. So, so those are some of the tools that we're working to put together.
00:29:25
Speaker
And that's followed ancestry, right? Yeah. And it's a native app. It's been approved by Apple finally. Apple is a tough one to get into and it is only available in the United States and Canada. So North America right now, as we get more interest and we're starting to get some interest from the UK, we're going to need to go back to Apple and
00:29:54
Speaker
We've got to change the platform a little bit for every country.
00:30:00
Speaker
What I'm hearing and what I loved in a couple of these examples like the app or the store is that you're as an entrepreneur seeing a challenge or a need and then finding a way or building a way to address it. And that's something that is very interesting to me personally and to a lot of folks. I mean, could you elaborate a little bit on that? Like what drives you? Why is it that you decided to go after and solve these problems?
00:30:26
Speaker
wouldn't somebody else be able to solve them? Why you? And I'm just curious why your personal passion for these solutions. I have a passion for if there's a problem, I for some reason have this thing in me that's driving me to solve the problem. And our family lumber company, it was as simple as we needed to name the toy management system for ours. We needed to sell more wood. I love helping people. And so
00:30:55
Speaker
We set out to develop these different things to market our own products, to solve our inventory issues. Our inventory was a mess. It was a hot mess. When you're telling a story, we're not just putting out the same thing over and over. We're telling the backstory on all the skips of lumber. It might be 100,000 board seat of wood, but it came out
00:31:25
Speaker
because of this disease or this blight or this, you know, these other things. And so we wanna tell that backstory or, you know, if a local government takes out a bunch of trees to protect the, this actually happened in the greater Sacramento area, they had to do some living improvement. And unfortunately, these beautiful trees, how'd they come out? You know, hundreds of thousands of board feet of,
00:31:53
Speaker
timber are coming out of these areas and what are we gonna do with them? And so repurposing that and telling that story was a huge part of it. Well, you start to get 10 acres, 20 acres full of logs and you're going, oh, did that, wait, where did that one come from? And just setting those systems up to know that here's the backstory on these,
00:32:19
Speaker
These logs are going to be cut in this manner because here's the grade of these logs. These are more conducive to this type of material versus this type and putting that sawing fan in a system. And then going, OK, how do we track this? How do we follow this all the way through to make sure that we know that these logs
00:32:40
Speaker
go with this large, just like FSC does. You have just following that chain of custody and that tracking. And so we decided to use QR code technology and
00:32:57
Speaker
scan it. And so we'll just go out with our cell phone and just scan the log and follow that all the way through. And as I'm developing this and as I'm building this, I'm thinking, well, this is a solution for me, but who else can use this? Literally, this entire network that we're building up can use this. All the products can go in there, and then all the products collectively can be sold. And that's how we can rescue more urban trees,
00:33:26
Speaker
support our small local economies. Yeah, it's competitive. There's competition in it. Of course, we want to sell wood and the company down the street wants to sell wood, but we compete collaboratively. I don't know. That makes me feel good. It brings out win-win. The competitive collaboration just coming together, it inspires me.
Misconceptions and Realities of Urban Wood
00:33:51
Speaker
I don't know. It just feels like the right thing to do.
00:33:54
Speaker
That's incredible. One of the things you mentioned early on were those misconceptions that you had in California growing up in the assembly business. What are some common misconceptions today in your area of expertise, in your field, the topics that you talked to us about?
00:34:14
Speaker
One of the common misconceptions now is still people don't understand on a large scale that we don't need to send our trees to the landfill. There are so many better uses. Of course, some of it's going to be chipped, some of it's going to be mulched. That's just the nature of it.
00:34:37
Speaker
But most people don't understand that urban wood can be just as valuable, just as beautiful as any wood that we might have imported from another area or traditional timber as well. And I guess when you say that, a question that comes up is what sets urban wood apart from exotic imported woods or others? So why should consumers or businesses consider urban wood as a viable alternative?
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah, well, one of the resources is right here in our backyard. It's very frustrating to see. And I know, Jake, you're in Thailand, so urban wood over here would not be the best solution for you. But you have urban wood right there in your area, and it's gorgeous. And so if each community where you are were to look at your own natural resources and begin to utilize those,
00:35:32
Speaker
It provides a little more holistic approach to life. It lowers the carbon footprint from the standpoint of transportation. We're not having to import the woods. It bolsters that local economy and just provides a sense of community that it's going back. It's more cyclical. It's this full circle
00:36:01
Speaker
urban wood economies or full circle economies in general. One of the things that, at least here in California, is we have so many different species. I know this is true in many different places.
00:36:19
Speaker
Our woods, when you open them up, will rival exotics any day of the week. They are just stunning. One of the things with urban trees is you're bringing in a diversity of species and so you have all these different varieties of woods. Thank you for explaining that.
00:36:41
Speaker
What I'd like to know is how is this pilot coming with the standards and maybe what are one or a couple of things that you guys found along the way that you got that you're adapting. But is it going well. What are the next steps with it.
00:36:57
Speaker
So we have a task force to review. We've been following it here. I opened a store where Urban Wood Network members can sell their wood through the store. They're following that simple chain of custody. They need to know the source, the reason for removal.
00:37:15
Speaker
and telling that that path. And so through that, we did discover that there were a few things in there that were a little harder to identify. One of the things is, if it's coming from a city that has an urban forest management plan, we don't necessarily need to know the detail on every law. We need to know that, okay, this city is following these standards.
00:37:38
Speaker
they're doing what they need to do. Aggregating those lobs into more of a grouping, so you're not having to do a direct tree to log to lumber connection on larger tracts of land. That's one of the things that we discovered. It's in the beginning phases of being a formal audited pilot study,
00:38:02
Speaker
We recently formed a pilot task force to follow the pilotors as they go through, making sure they have a certain sampling of products, making sure that they're testing a certain number of data points against what the standards say, and then following different pathways to get there.
00:38:27
Speaker
Could you have guessed 10 years ago that you'd be here, you know, talking about this today and were some of the reasons maybe why, you know, that seems far out of reach?
00:38:41
Speaker
10 years ago today, let me see, 2013. Maybe not specifically today. 2013, no, I was looking back. I can go back to where I was in 2013, you know, September 2013. And I had opened a, it was my first attempt at opening a very small store. It was before we had seen it.
00:39:04
Speaker
is before we had inventory management, you used to live down there. Well, you were more on the Santa Cruz side in the Monterey Bay. My husband was working down in the Monterey Bay. I was operating Woodmizer facility remotely. We kept our Northern California facility open. I opened a little wood store down there, our lumber store, and started testing out the concept. To look at where I was then,
00:39:34
Speaker
No, I didn't. It's grown significantly and then I was just so frustrated with the inventory. It did not occur to me that I had it within me to solve that. It never crossed my radar.
00:39:53
Speaker
As a matter of fact, a friend of mine, Julie Stillman, she's one of my partners with Ancestry. I was hiring someone else to build us an inventory management system and going, gosh, do we really do this? She's like, you know what I used to do for a living? It happened. She started to walk me through it and I'm like,
00:40:15
Speaker
I mean, we can do this ourselves. So I could a lot of, a lot of faith and trust in her, but she, she, she knocked it out of the park though. And so what is 10 years from now look like for urban wood?
00:40:29
Speaker
10 years from now, my hope is that to take one of our beautiful natural resources, which are trees, and throw them into the landfill would be synonymous with taking your plastic water bottle and throwing it in the ocean. It just would be so foreign, you know, to the way that we think.
00:40:50
Speaker
And I would like to have every concealer, not just, you know, initially my call was across America, but now I'm like, no, it's, this is worldwide, every
00:41:04
Speaker
person who anywhere in the world uses wood products. And a lot of countries do this already. Look to your own natural resources. Look to what's right there in front of you. And also looking at what are we using that's plastic that could be wood. And really partnering a lot more with the traditional wood world because wood is good.
Future Aspirations and Career Opportunities in Urban Wood
00:41:28
Speaker
Wood, regardless of the source, is just a wonderful
00:41:33
Speaker
wonderful product to build with all the biophilic design. None of that matters whether it's urban or traditional. None of the sourcing matters for so many of the properties for wood. We just have another wood source as well. And so just really partnering with the traditional wood world more.
00:41:52
Speaker
Absolutely. Can you speak to the younger generation and what opportunities there might be for the younger generation to come in and tap into forestry and wood products and opportunities there?
00:42:05
Speaker
That's a great question. We actually had a local high school tour, the education staff, not the kids, tour to ask that exact question, like what do we do to encourage kids to enter this? Because there's this misconception amongst kids that every kid needs to be a doctor or a lawyer or working in office and not understanding that so many of the kids, especially for some
00:42:35
Speaker
you know some of the more rural schools are never going to go to college and that's okay as long as they learn a trade or maybe they do go to college and and also learn a trade but but you don't have to do one or the other and and one of the things that that we're doing as an internship type
00:42:56
Speaker
project here to kind of get there to get the students feet wet on what it's like to work with with wood what it's like to you know and you don't have to do all the pieces of it you could be the sawmill operator you know maybe if you're
00:43:13
Speaker
more of an extrovert, you might want to go into the sales side of it. And learning their own personality types and where they're coming from and their own strengths and weaknesses to find the right jobs for them, what makes them happy. And as my husband always says, what's their sole purpose, the S-O-U-L, sole purpose. And
00:43:37
Speaker
And so we actually have a student, we work with the local communities where
00:43:50
Speaker
people who have time, not time to serve, but community service to serve for an offense and a legal issue. We have a program here where we've worked with them to let them work their hours off. That helps them understand also if this is the right field for them. And then we also provide some of the personal growth coaches. So we're doing both of those together. And so we're really helping
00:44:18
Speaker
what we think helping position them to find out what it is that they want. What's one thing that you would tell your younger self to get to where you are today and looking into the future where you could go? Maybe something that you could tell your younger self to help you early on in your career, in your path.
00:44:39
Speaker
I think one of the base things for, you know, we've been actually, my husband and I have been talking about this a lot lately. And one of the things that I think of often is relax and don't assume that taking the time to pause and reflect
00:44:59
Speaker
is not acting, is not doing, and it's not growing. And that is such an important part. Otherwise, you're just staying so busy, you're not realizing you... Sometimes you can be so busy, but you're going in the wrong direction. And if you never stop, pause, and reflect... How do you know that?
00:45:21
Speaker
Thank you so much for coming on and I have a feeling like we might need to have a follow-up at some point because there's a lot of moving pieces, right? New apps, new programs, new standards, pilot projects. And I'm really happy that you came on because how often do our new standards introduced into the wood industry?
00:45:44
Speaker
Thank you for the opportunity to interview you today to have an opportunity to have a conversation and hear your advice, things you're working on, excited for you in the future of urban wood. Thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation together. Yeah, well, thank you.