NPR Story
That gives us around 61 trees each (pretty roughly) when you divide the number of trees on Earth by the number of people on Earth.
As the interviewee mentions in the story, nobody really knows how many products we use that are made out of wood. This is a little scary to me, but it really got me thinking about the big things... Sure, most furniture is made out of wood - but if you're like most Americans, the bulk of the wood furniture you own is actually made from the leftovers of other wood products using pressboard, OSB, MDF, etc. Unfortunately, most of our houses are still stick built - which uses a tremendous amount of wood.
Seattle Times
A 2000 square foot home uses about 26,700 board feet of lumber to build - and probably more if you have a deck, basement, hardwood floors. How many trees is 26,700 board feet? According to the above article from the Seattle Times, about 102 trees. That's more than a single person is really aloud to use, but if you have at least one other person that lives in the home with you - you're within your limit.
But where does it all come from? For most of us in the Mid-West, it comes from Canada. Canada has an excellent resource of timber, but we can't really reliably know that the trees cut to build our houses were ever replaced. Planting 102 trees in our back yard to make up for the trees used on our homes is a good thought, but not a reality for suburbanite slobs like my family. While timber actually IS considered a renewable resource, I'm not sure we're actually living up to that classification considering how fast we use it.
I don't have a solution to this. I know I'll keep using trees and everything... but I've been thinking lots about sustainability lately - and I just don't see it in the way we live. Does this make me a "tree-hugger"? I don't know, but it might make me a "tree-planter".
