Turning lost trees from the streets of Philadelphia into beautiful timber

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Trees felled to manage urban forests constitutes a significant volume of green waste, especially when you consider the woody trunks and branches that can end up in landfill or cleanfill.


Philadelphia has one of the largest urban parks in the USA. The Urban Wood Project aims to take the forgotten resource that results from managing the park and turn it into a valuable resource. The site is located at the Fairmount Park Organic Recycling Centre, a short drive from the centre of Philadelphia, which processes green waste for the City of Philadelphia, composing the leaf waste collected around the city and mixing it with manure from police stables in windrows. The site processes over 5,000 tonnes of organic waste per year.

Dead and storm damaged trees are bought to the centre from parks and reserves across the city. Climate change and invasive species are increasing the volume of organic waste.  

To reduce wood waste, the City Parks and Recreation department have created a pop-up timber yard to take wood waste and turn it into usable timber. Led by Marc Wilken, Director of Business and Event Development at Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, The Urban Wood Project works in partnership with Cambium Carbon to selects logs that have fallen naturally or through park management and puts them through a portable timber mill. This provides a source of dimensional timber species that wouldn’t otherwise be available and prevents it from going to landfill.

                                        

Cut timber is stacked and filleted to dry before being sold to furniture makers and for interior fit out. Species typically recovered include oak, ash and maple. 

Currently the site has the ability to process around 900 tonnes of logs p.a. with a longer term plan for the site is to obtain a solar powered kiln to speed drying. 

Links 
Urban Wood Project
https://www.phila.gov/2022-03-24-parks-recs-organic-recycling-center-receives-toro-urban-innovation-award/

Cambium Carbon is a platform that enables circular economies through Carbon-Smart material reuse, by unlocking the power of local suppliers. We save fallen trees from landfill and decomposition, transforming them into valuable products with place-based impact.  
https://cambiumcarbon.com/about-us/


Comments

  1. Caroline31 August 2022 at 17:39

    This is really neat. It reminds me of my recent visit to the (much smaller scale) Stumpery in Queens Park in Invercargill. They use all the wood waste from the park itself, plus stumps and logs from storm damage and drift wood. The artist chains it all together to make an amazing playground for kids (and me!) to clamber over. Spent hours there! https://icc.govt.nz/parks-and-reserves/visit-our-parks/stumpery/

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