sustain & protect

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Trees are great at pulling atmospheric carbon out of our air. The best part is that carbon stays locked up long after a tree is made into buildings, furniture or hundreds of other wood products.

The great carbon storers

Trees love carbon dioxide, and that’s good news for us because too much atmospheric carbon results in higher air temperatures. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and transform it through photosynthesis into oxygen and sugars (carbon). Oxygen is released into the air, and carbon is stored in the tree as cellulose. And even after a tree is harvested and made into a table, a skateboard or even a house, the carbon remains within the wood.

Watch how carbon is captured and stored by trees:

Carbon storage is one reason why using wood as a building material is better for theenvironment than using concrete and steel, which require more energy and water to produce and create large amounts of carbon dioxide during manufacture. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that U.S. forests sequestered a net of approximately 309 million tons of carbon each year between 1952 to 1992, which offset approximately 25 percent of our country’s human-produced carbon emissions during that time period.