Local Wood Partnerships Create Jobs, Sustainably.

Ecohaus (a retailer of wood products from well-managed forests) and Sustainable Northwest Wood (a distributor of wood products from well-managed forests) have long partnered to bring a wide range of beautiful, Northwest, FSC certified wood products to a local audience. Our commitment to this joint-mission comes from our conviction that sustainable forestry can -and does- positively affect the lives of people in our community and beyond. 

An excellent example of this principlein motion is our Blue Pine, a unique offering from Sustainable Northwest Wood. The story behind this beautiful wood product has more to it than just the wood’s striking aesthetic, this is a story that has helped create jobs locally and improved forest health, too. 

Recently in Grant County, Oregon the closure of four out of the five sawmills in recent years resulted in layoffs for over 20% of the local workforce, devastating the local economy. In an effort to revive community enterprise while restoring forests; local environmental groups, loggers, federal agencies, and community leaders worked together to find common ground to remove standing dead trees, mostly blue pine, from local forests. This effort, whose focus on good stewardship and restoration, won them support from a diverse group of stakeholders and helped supply local mills with the timber they needed to stay open. Mike Billman of Malheur Lumber Company says “Working with local and national environmental organizations, Malheur Lumber Company has seen advancements in forest restoration projects on our local National Forest land. We expect that our collective efforts will improve forest health and ecological diversity while providing for forest related jobs and supplying raw materials to the forest products industry. We are excited to work with Sustainable Northwest Wood and to be an integral part of sustainable forest management!”

Through Ecohaus and Sustainable Northwest Wood, the wood from community initiatives like this one can, in-turn, become a strong and sustainable part of the buildings that house and sustain communities up and down the West Coast. 

West Coast wood = West Coast jobs 

Responsibly managed wood = Jobs for years to come. 

SW-COC-000023

Tags: community, Market Development, social responsibility

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Product. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.