Most of your favorite wooden products from Lee Display are made from Redwood. Our biggest seller, the Potting Table, is made primarily of this building material. So, you may be wondering why we choose Redwood over so many other varieties of wood. Here's why Lee Display's Potting Tables are all made of Redwood:
1. Abundance of Material For Repurposing
For centuries, Redwood has been used as one of the main building materials for outdoor decks, homes, furniture, and fences. During the Gold Rush, there was a large increase in demand for housing and furniture on the West Coast. The first pioneers relied heavily on Redwood, which is native of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington State. Redwood was so widely used for homes, that in the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire in 1906, with its natural resistance to fire, many of the buildings withstood the wreckage.
Unfortunately today, many contractors and construction companies are replacing Redwood decks, homes and fences with composite materials that rely heavily on chemical resins and fossil fuels to source. At the same time, they are scraping the Redwood for wood chips, sawdust, and pellets. According to the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, less than 20% of the energy used to scrap wood has been generated from renewable sources. So, we're burning fossil fuels to scrap Redwood which in turn releases more CO2 into the atmosphere, compounding the problem we are in.
Lee Display works with local fencing and contracting companies in Northern California to purchase their old redwood materials and repurpose it into usable products.
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2. Redwood Is Naturally Resistant to Decay and Fire
Unlike newer building materials which rely on chemical additives and fossil fuel production, Redwood doesn't require fire retardants to protect it from fire and decay. Just like Red Wine's tannins, Redwood tannins (the same thing that gives the wood its vibrant red color), provides its natural resistance to pests, insects, fire, and decay.
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3. Redwood Is Sustainable and Carbon Sequestering
According to the University of Washington, due to its longevity and fiber makeup, Redwood stores more than double the amount of CO2 than the Pacific Northwest’s Conifer wood and Eucalyptus lumber. Meaning that at Lee Display, we're repurposing Redwood that would have been cut into pieces, thus releasing its stored carbon dioxide, from recycling factories that rely heavily on burning fossil fuels.
So when you're shopping with Lee Display for your newest home addition, you can rest easier knowing that your product comes with a green, renewable, and sustainable future.
To Shop for Lee Display's newest Sustainable Redwood Products, click here
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Redwood Potting Table
Sources:
- Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, CARBON, CLIMATE CHANGE, ENERGY, BIOMASS, Dr. William H. Schlesinger, March 26, 2018
- Earth911.com, 4 Surprising Redwood Facts: Understanding the Legendary Building Material, MAR 10, 2015
- P. Dwivedi, M. Khanna, Global Change Biology Bioenergy 7, 945 (2015)
- K-H. Erb et al., Nature 553, 73 (2018)
- K.C. Kelsey et al., Carbon Balance and Management 9, 6 (2014)
- S.V. Hanssen et al., Global Change Biology Bioenergy 9, 1406 (2017)
- M.T. Ter-Mikaelian et al., Journal of Forestry 113, 57 (2015)
