Business and environmental responsibility both offer unique challenges that are frequently treated as separate objectives. At Humboldt Redwood Company, we believe and practice the
idea that our natural environment is an equal stakeholder in everyone’s future.
But what does that mean? As a society, it is generally recognized that we need to reduce our carbon footprint, utilize renewable resources and slow the pace of non-renewable resource consumption. Understanding how day-to-day decisions impact the environment is a challenge for both businesses and consumers. We each want to know that we are leaving our environment as good as or even better off than we found it. One way our company does this is by harvesting and manufacturing our redwood products in a responsible manner.
We practice environmental stewardship by harvesting our redwood logs from our own, well-managed forestlands. One of the most efficient ways to sustain harvested forestlands is by replanting native tree species; this helps maintain the delicate balance of the forest ecosystem. In the old days, cleared forestlands were often replaced with rapidly growing, non-native species. This may have been a short-term solution, but did damage to the forestlands’ unique ecosystem in the long-term.
Another important element of our environmental stewardship is green building. Green building, whether commercial (including schools, offices, hospitals etc.) or residential (including redwood decks, redwood fences, redwood lawn furniture etc.), requires using resources responsibly. It is increasingly important in the marketplace and it is also important for environmental stewardship. The green building movement began in an attempt to lessen the impact of the built environment on energy and resource consumption.
These goals, taken together, form the heart of our tenets of environmental responsibility. We are always striving to reduce the already low environmental impact of redwood.
