Project Canopy
Forest Products Week was last month, but the amazing things that can be made from trees should be celebrated year-round! Here's just a little of what's happening - and can happen - here in Maine.
See you in the forest!
Kim - Outreach Director for Project Canopy, Maine Forest Service
 KENNEBEC JOURNAL - By day, Niles Krech and Steve Pracher are a criminal investigator and pharmacist, respectively. By night, they are the only people in Maine who produce urban live slab lumber.
The idea to start Maine Urban Timber Co. came after the pair built a sawmill for fun.
When they realized the size and the scope of the sawmill that they had made, Krech did some research and found urban live slab lumber was missing — and might have a market — in Maine.
“I looked into different resources and saw that there were people that were specializing in producing urban live slab lumber,” Krech said. “It’s a market that Maine is missing, even in New England.” Read more...
 BDN - Bangor-based Biofine Developments of Northeast Inc. has plans to produce locally sourced, renewable and emission-free heating oil by 2023.
The company hopes to make a biofuel made from 100 percent ethyl levulinate, an organic chemical compound, by processing woody fiber waste from paper and lumber mills, according to the Portland Press Herald. The biofuel, which would be called EL100, would be created with 100 tons of cellulose-based waste per day, and the company estimates that it would produce about 3 million gallons of heating oil per year.
If such fuel could be made at competitive prices, heating oil could be locally made and renewable, a significant development for Maine, where nearly two-thirds of homes still rely on heating oil as a primary heating source. Read more...
 MEDIUM - Name a carbon capture technology that is fully proven, used the world over, pumps out oxygen, and improves wellbeing at the same time? There’s only one answer: trees. As trees grow they feed on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and trap it in the form of wood: as long as the wood exists, the carbon is captured and not released back into the atmosphere. This makes wood not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative, as a building material.
When I met the architect Andrew Waugh earlier this year, on assignment for the BBC, I was struck by the simplicity of the solution he is proposing. Waugh likes to build with wood. As a young architect he used to be, he admits, something of a show-off, with a penchant for fast cars and sexy designs. Now he drives an unassuming electric car (less Tesla, more hatchback) and builds functional, commercial tower blocks out of wood. The reason is climate change. He wants wood to replace concrete and steel as the world’s primary building material, and in so doing grow more forests, and sequester more carbon. Read more...
Maine Audubon can help central Maine landowners make woodlands wildlife-friendly
In Denmark, the forest is the new classroom
Nov 18 Partners in Community Forestry Conference
Nov 24 Webinar: An Introduction to Forests, Carbon Sequestration and Markets 12PM
Dec 1 Webinar: Invasive Woody Plant Management 2PM
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