Green Waste Recycler Blooms in California

The non-profit Protect All Life (PAL) Foundation Tree Recycling Yard is now serving the San Francisco Bay Area to take delivery on whole trees and lumber for recycling.

Rather than making chips or mulch, the PAL facility uses its accepted trees, trunks and timber sections to create veneer, paneling, furniture, flooring, decking and material for wood sculptors.

PAL executive director Marcus von Skepsgardh says PAL wants to promote the highest-end uses for urban trees through the manufacture of lumber, countertops and other products.

The Tree Recycling Yard offers free pickup to remove felled and limbed trees in the San Francisco Bay Area. The PAL program has already recycled more than 6,000 tons of trees and other wood items.

“Urban trees are often overlooked as part of the forest,” says von Skepsgardh, “but the forest is actually in our own back yard. If we recycle paper to save the trees, why not recycle the trees themselves. It only makes sense.”

A 1994 California Integrated Waste Management Board report estimated that 88 percent of the 3 million tons of waste wood from urban sources entering the solid waste stream annually was landfilled at that time.