For improvement projects around your home or office, green your wood use by looking for the following:

• Certified sustainable wood
• Composition woods or engineered wood products
• Salvaged, reclaimed or re-milled lumber
• Recycled content sheet goods, such as recycled newsprint, agricultural byproducts or wood waste
• Instead of installing hardwood floors, check out cork and bamboo, which grow faster than typical hardwood

By purchasing and utilizing products made from recycled or reclaimed wood products, not only do you prevent a valuable waste from entering landfills, but you also contribute to the demand for manufacturers to continue to produce these products.

Deconstruct With Care

An important consideration when recycling wood is the way in which you disassemble old wood products. Known as “deconstruction,” this process is defined as “a process to carefully dismantle or remove useable materials from structures, as an alternative to demolition. It maximizes the recovery of valuable building materials for reuse and recycling and minimizes the amount of waste land-filled.”

Be sure to carefully deconstruct any wood products you are looking to replace. By leaving them intact, you enable another person or organization to utilize your waste.