Conserve & Protect

Waste not

As an industry founded on the principle of doing more with less, every scrap of wood has value. North America’s earliest composite wood manufacturers built their businesses by making high-quality wood-based products from sawmill waste, such as sawdust, shavings, and wood chips—recycling waste material that would otherwise be landfilled or burned. Today’s manufacturers take these original practices further by incorporating post-consumer wood waste and utilizing waste from sawmills that source wood from sustainable, locally managed forests.

Composite Panels are made with recycled wood, ensuring the entire tree is put to use in value-added products and very little is wasted.

The industry further optimizes the use of this source wood by ensuring 99% of all raw material inputs are put to productive use as new composite wood panels or biomass energy that fuels our plants. This results in an industry that produces near-zero waste, ensuring the highest and best use of this precious resource.

Protecting what sustains us all – local sourcing, sustainable harvests

Sustaining an abundant supply of timber is essential to our industry, and sustaining North America’s forests is essential to our planet. That’s why North American manufacturers ensure the wood fiber used for panel production is responsibly sourced. Sustainable forests are carefully managed to provide an ongoing cycle of growth, harvest, and renewal that enables biodiversity, protects wildlife habitats, and protects endangered plant species. They also help mitigate climate change by optimizing the forests’ ability to clean the atmosphere since young trees absorb and sequester more carbon than mature trees.

These working forests provide millions of jobs across North America, primarily in rural areas where they are needed most.
Their adherence to sustainable practices as mandated by state forest management laws, and often further certified and monitored by third party groups including the Forestry Stewardship Council, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the American Tree Farm System, and the Canadian Standards Association.
By sourcing both recycled and harvested raw materials locally, composite wood panel manufacturers minimize transportation impacts while providing business opportunities, jobs, and revenues that benefit their surrounding communities.