I just read a very disturbing article which reflects badly on the wood floor business. Here is the link, so that you will know the reasoning behind this month’s blog post.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-thousand-year-old-trees-became-new-ivory-180963365/
My immediate reaction is, quite honestly, what the hell is wrong with some people! After some reflection, my thoughts have turned to responding positively on our segment of the wood floor business, athletic floors.
We are members of the Maple Floor Manufacturers Association, the MFMA. My father, John Byrnes, was inducted into the MFMA Hall of Fame in 2014 and I am very proud of my past and current involvement with the standard bearing association for maple athletic floors. The MFMA has been the voice of sustainability and industry quality since 1897, long before most of the World was thinking about the environment.
I have taken the information below directly from the MFMA’s website. With horrible stories such as the one above from the Smithsonian Magazine, I think it’s critical to understand that there are great associations like the MFMA that promote sustainability in a crazy World.
The Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association is dedicated to preserving and protecting America’s forestlands, while providing the forest products critical to the nation’s well-being. MFMA and its members are committed to providing the highest standards of quality available from America’s forests.
Are we running out of hardwoods?
- There are 737 million acres of forests in the U.S., one-third of the nation.
- Every year the forest industry, together with federal and state forest agencies, plants more than 1.5 billion trees.
- Forest Statistics of the United States, 2002, shows that the U.S. grows six times more hardwoods than are harvested each year.
- Hardwoods have increased in every region of the U.S.
- Wood is the only natural resource on Earth that is at once renewable, recyclable, biodegradable and reusable. The energy required to grow our timber supply is free. It comes from the sun.
- More than 1,750,000 Americans are employed in the forest products industry. Many millions more employed in the home construction, home furnishing, transportation and heavy equipment industries owe their jobs to this one basic industry that converts harvested timber to finished products.
* This information was provided by the Evergreen Magazine and NHLA’s Forest Resource Fact Book.