The variety of products made from wood residues show how we can use everything given to us by nature. Converting raw natural resources like timber into consumer goods requires both efficiency and environmental awareness. While sawmills were once interested only in how many boards could be produced, today's wood processing plants try to recover a product from everything hauled from the woods.
Lumber is a commodity so readily available it is taken for granted.
At a sawmill rectangular pieces of lumber are sawed from logs that are nearly round. But this waste is now considered a valuable by-product that can meet some of our everyday needs. Bark accumulates dirt, sand and other foreign matter. By removing the abrasive bark, saws stay sharper longer. Coarse residues may have bark attached if the logs were not debarked.