Marks Lumber is on the front lines of conservation and eco-friendly practices. Minimizing waste is not only a key to our economic success, but it helps us achieve our goals for corporate citizenship. We generally approach reducing waste by aggressively maximizing the utilization of three resources in our manufacturing operation: wood fiber, energy, and labor.

Developing Processes

Effectively using these resources requires attention to resource requirements at every individual step in the supply chain and manufacturing process. As we have grown over the past 30 years, Marks Lumber has developed tools and processes to make very efficient use of our investment in wood fiber, energy, and labor. In this article, we will focus on two of these efficiencies; wood fiber and energy waste.

Three key capabilities Marks Lumber has developed that allow us to minimize wood-fiber and energy waste:

• Use the right log for the right product
• Develop new products and markets for non-performing fiber investment
• Develop Infrastructure to recover energy from wood-fiber that cannot be made into products

Where Our Expertise Shines

Using the right log for the right product is a fundamental skill that is extremely important for a specialty sawmill like Marks Lumber, as we manufacture a wide variety of wood products. Obviously, extremely high-grade logs can be used for any product. To offer a wide range of products, we focus on delivering high-end results, and then using the quality fiber from our best logs, to source other products. Broadly, that means getting appearance grade structural timbers and having them circle sawn. Our priority is to create a unique "Montana Look" using the very best logs we can source, and using the materials left over for other quality products that we offer.

Practical Execution

Given the reality that wood is a natural product, defects are a fact of life for all mills. Where Marks excels is manufacturing the right products from the rest of this material. A basic example of this comes into play when cutting inland Douglas Fir. Because everybody wants those 16-foot sticks, we end up with far more short logs, 8' and 10' in length, than the market generally calls for.

As a result, Marks Lumber has developed both the manufacturing capability and market for rough-sawn shiplap and rough-sawn flooring, where 8' and 10' material is ideal. Defects, for example, knots, shake, and pitch pockets, can all be included in the right product, and our processes are designed to optimize this. Overall, we are still talking about really good wood-fiber, and effectively dealing with lower grade fiber that will not make traditional timber products. Marks Lumber uses decades of experience to be creative while developing products and markets for less traditional fiber waste.

Upping our Game

Initially, our sawmill was designed to discretely remove sawdust, wood chips, larger bark chunks, bark fines, wood/bark mixture, and larger chunks that could be sold as firewood for residential heating. But we have expanded upon that original theory, using lower grade fiber to make ground or chip-based products. In offering this type of product, we found it to be an area that showed promise right away.

In the beginning, we struggled with selling enough of them to keep from developing huge stockpiles. As for what we did sell, it wasn't at all profitable. So over time, we developed the capability to re-manufacture these by-products further into more valuable products.

A very successful product for us has been Engineered Wood Fiber, often called either by the acronym EWF, playground material, or playground chips. Engineered wood fiber is an IPEMA certified safe fall protection material used on playgrounds. All of Marks Lumber's wood chips are now re-manufactured into EWF, which accounts for about one-third of all the EWF we sell.

Other successful re-manufactured by-products are generally landscape and gardening products. These products complete the circle of life by helping new plants grow, and include both ground cover and soil amendment products. These products have been vital to the long-term success we have had at Marks Lumber and continue to enable us to have almost zero waste, but sometimes the highest calling for wood fiber isn't products, it's energy.

Efficiencies With Energy

When talking about energy in trees, it is crucial to understand that it primarily comes from burning the material and releasing the stored carbon as Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Another key thing to understand is that all of the carbon stored in trees is eventually released in one of two ways. It gets released as CO2 into the atmosphere through burning (in a fire) or it it released through the natural decomposition process. Manufacturing quality timber products requires a tremendous amount of heat energy.

At Marks Lumber, we operate a bio-fuel boiler to heat our dry kiln and some manufacturing facilities. This saves us money by leveraging our previous investment in wood-fiber. In addition, all of the fuel that we burn eventually decomposes and releases stored carbon as CO2. By using this fuel instead of another fuel source, we drastically reduce the total carbon footprint of our operation. So, by paying attention to our energy use, we can minimize the waste of energy and our carbon footprint.

There is a lot more that goes into being a sustainable timber products manufacturer than just minimizing waste. But it is one of the huge keys to both economic and environmental sustainability. When you choose Marks Lumber as your supplier of timber products, you can be assured that you will receive excellent product value and that we are actively working to support the environment. Regardless of whether it's traditional timber products or re-purposed by-products, we are true to our process and our goals of sustainability. A big piece of that is our successful commitment to using the whole log and minimizing waste in our energy use.

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