Making a purchase or consuming products that are grown and manufactured locally minimizes ecological impact and maximizes benefit to your local community. When you purchase Marks Lumber flooring, you can be confident knowing that your circle sawn wood flooring was grown in Montana, harvested by Montanans, and manufactured at a single facility by some of your neighbors.

Wood is a renewable, sustainable building material. Let us look at how buying locally from companies who rely on intelligent harvest and use of this resource make it even more amazing.

Benefits of Locally Sourced Timber

Wood product manufacturing jobs provide the basis for many rural communities and, you are no doubt aware, buying from local companies benefits all of us. Growing companies, like Marks Lumber, have a need for many products and services thus contributing to the local economy.

Locally manufactured products can have lower energy costs than products grown and made in geographically diverse areas. At Marks, we haul logs in to our facility and completely manufacture our specialty products there. Our company does not use blanks manufactured elsewhere. So this simple process minimizes transportation of material during the manufacturing process.

Harvest Practice Matters to All of Us

Marks Lumber works with foresters who have experience harvesting timber to create healthy forests. Fire suppression and limited timber harvest has left much of Montana’s forests overgrown with trees in bad health and a huge amount of dead and dying trees. These foresters work with stewards of both public and private lands to create healthy forests.

In a broad sense, modern silviculture, the growing and cultivation of trees, involves using a wide variety of prescriptions to mimic nature in many respects.

Some trees may be thinned and left to rot to improve the soil. In some areas, it does not make sense to harvest trees for a variety of reasons, but some controlled burning would be advantageous to the overall health of the forest. In other areas, harvesting trees for timber makes sense, leaving behind healthy trees and native young trees.

Growing, healthy forests use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen into the air which benefits the environment. Decaying and burning wood release this stored carbon dioxide, but carbon in logs that are made into timber products are stored there until the structure burns or decays. Around Montana there are many buildings that are over 100 years old, and all the carbon in those buildings is still not going anywhere soon.

In addition to these environmental benefits, healthy forests provide better wildlife habitat; healthy forests are far less prone to catastrophic wildfire; and having healthy forests is much more advantageous than dying and decaying forests.

Thanks for Shopping and Buying Local

The team at Marks Lumber encourages you to buy locally, including our locally manufactured flooring and other wood products. We know you will get years of quality wear and use from our products, and at the same time enjoy healthy and vibrant forests.