How do we use the wood from old trees as sustainably as possible?
Is heating with wood sustainable or is it better to use wood only as a building material?
This question was answered by forester Elena Schmidtmeyer in an interview:
When wood is processed into durable wood products, such as roof trusses, dining tables, parquet flooring or furniture, the bound CO2 is stored for a particularly long time and is therefore not released. But what is often forgotten is that not all wood is suitable for this. Wood that is not suitable for this purpose (such as the wood produced when thinning out the treetop) is often processed into firewood. And rightly so. In addition, there is an increasing amount of damaged timber in Germany. The wood has to be harvested unplanned because it is infested with insects or would be damaged by a storm. In 2019, the volume of damaged timber amounted to around 30 million cubic meters. Some of this wood is difficult to sell because it no longer meets certain requirements of the wood processing industry. However, it is still excellent as firewood! As an energy source, wood replaces significantly more energy-intensive fossil fuels and is therefore also very sustainable. Provided, of course, that it comes from sustainable forestry.
The background to the interview:
We are committed to reforestation. One way of doing this is to make donations and to plant trees. On the other hand, we also contribute to making the topic of “reforestation” more visible to the general public. We interviewed forester Elena Schmidtmeyer and filmed a series of video clips with her that answer many interesting questions on the subject.
Why do we get involved and how exactly do we do it? Please read our separate article here.
Would you like to watch all the videos with forester Elena Schmidtmeyer now? You can already find them on our YouTube channel.
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