Cambium Carbon is a a public benefit corporation working to build a circular economy model for wood reuse. In collaboration with the Arbor Day Foundation, they have published a study on wood re-use opportunity in three major U.S. cities that are part of the Cities4Forests network. Through the mean of building a wood reuse market, they can save money, provide new resources for urban forest restoration and help climate improvement. Trees offer various benefits for cities, yet 36 million trees come down in cities across the United States each year due to disease, development or old age. Much of this wood ends up burned, chipped into mulch or tossed into landfills, despite its potential to become a valuable product. Cambium Carbon's "reforestation hubs" model allows cities to create new value from fallen urban trees. Cities can help recover and "upcycle" that waste into higher-value products such as furniture, flooring and construction material. The revenue that is generated from the sale of those items and the reduced cost of wood waste disposal can then be invested into urban forestry projects, such as planting new trees or maintaining existing trees. The study show that, in the city of New York, an average of 12,000 street and park trees are removed each year for the last five years, and are chipped on site for easier transportation and disposal. The city also has a decentralized urban forestry system in which each of the five boroughs operates its own forestry team, which makes it even more complicated to manage a massive wood waste stream. Waste management costs also pose a major challenge. With real estate and transit at a premium, the cost to have wood waste hauled and disposed can be up to $70 a ton. These costs can be significantly increased after severe storm events: 2020’s Hurricane Isaias downed nearly 3,400 trees in New York City parks, leading to a bill of more than $1.5 million for the city’s wood waste management. The case study found that establishing a centralized sorting and processing operation to recycle fallen wood could provide a net value to the city, in addition to savings from avoided disposal fees. A reuse program, could also avoid significant transportation and disposal emissions, as the city would no longer have to truck waste outside of the city and state. Additionally, local processing would allow for carbon storage in durable wood products, much of which would otherwise be released during burning, mulching and decomposition. Read more on https://www.wri.org/insights/city-revenue-wood-reuse-market and https://cambiumcarbon.com/