Green Wood

Wood Versus Steel and Concrete

Paul Kropp — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:45:54 +0000

It is easy to look at a pile of logs going down the road on a huge truck and think to yourself that they are destroying forests. But quite to the contrary, when properly harvested, these trees are making way for new trees to grow. Trees that will use the sun and earth and perform an important carbon dioxide eating function while maturing into useable building products. I recently came upon the Canadian Wood Councils web site here Canadian Wood Council

Check it out. It is very interesting on the benifits of using wood construction. Compared to steel and Concrete, wood uses way less energy to process and helps the enviroment while growing. Concrete and steel don’t renew once we take them out of the earth. The only sustainable route they have is through recycling. Which of course is a great thing to do.

Don’t get me wrong…I love steel and concrete when that is what is required because of their properties…..but do we really need to build so many buildings with steel studs??? And lets not even get started on steel cabinets!!

FSC Certification?????

Paul Kropp — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:17:44 +0000

Sure it sound nice to say “were FSC certified” but what does that really mean? Or more importantly what does it mean if you are not! Are you raping mother earth if you do not have that snazzy label gracing your liturature and on your products. While I do appreciate the good work FSC is doing the fees they charge make it very tough for small shops to participate and more importantly small forest stands. My shop foreman Chris brought this article to my attention –http://www.woodshopnews.com/index.php/columns-blogs/11-taking-stock/497901-homegrown-products-boost-green-movement

In a nutshell what it says is that a large percentage of the lumber we use comes from family size timberstands that are sustainable harvested but the owners dont have the resourses to certify.

Wood has allways been a nice renewable resourse. Do we need a label for that? Now exotics….that’s a different story all together!

I guess we are greener than I thought

Paul Kropp — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:17:05 +0000

David has an insightful post here http://blog.woodshopnews.com/tbaw/?p=72 about how our products are green to a degree by default. Not that we can’t do a whole lot better but he does have a point.

One Step at a time

Paul Kropp — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:14:29 +0000

Well we have been a bit overwhelmed with trying to be more enviromenally friendly and have been in a bit of a paralysis because of it. So, at the suggestion of an employee, we have decided to make a monthly area of focus and then act on that small area during the month. This may take a bit to make a huge inpact but it is much better than doing nothing. We are going to make a goal for the month at the first “tuesday morning meeting” of each month. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of a Tuesday morning meeting this is the hour each week that we cram everyone into the breakroom, eat danish and bagels and go over stuff. Good times except the “cramming” part. We will set our goals here and then post results and interesting tidbits.

Welcome to the Kropp Woodworking Green Blog

Paul Kropp — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:23:54 +0000

Hi all,

I hesitate to call this a “green” blog but that is what it is and that is my favorite color so sorry to all those cynics that rightfully point out that the word green is way overused in this manner. Well now that I have that out of my system …welcome. My name is Paul Kropp and I am the owner of Kropp Woodworking Inc. in Mount Clemens Michigan. This blog will chronicle our journey to become a more enviromentally friendly woodworking company. We have been making attempts over the past two years to to decrease our footprint and recycle more. But it is not easy! You can visit our website at www.kroppwoodworking.com to find out more about the company and our products and services. I have invited all of our staff to join in and contribute. I look forward to seeing how this all progresses. This is my first attempt at a blog so here it goes!!!!!!!!!