Recycling the victims of the Emerald Ash Borer
Scarborough firm is the first in Toronto to be certified to process and ship hardwood lumber previously infected by pests.

Thestar.com
July 14, 2014
By Jacques Gallant

Where most people feel frustration, perhaps even despair, at the idea of a fallen diseased tree, Urban Tree Salvage sees opportunity.

The Scarborough-based firm, known for turning old city trees into furniture and other items, has become the first organization in Toronto to be certified by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to process and ship hardwood lumber previously infected by pests, including Ash.

The certification means that the company, which describes itself as Canada’s largest urban log salvaging firm, complies with a rigorous heat treatment process to kill pests and prevent their movement.

Co-owner Sean Gorham said one of the main reasons he and partner Melissa Neist decided to become certified was to educate people about the need to heat treat wood and limit the spread of pests, particularly the pesky emerald ash borer.

A native of Asia, the emerald ash borer is a green beetle that entered North America in 2002. It feeds off the wood of all 22 species of ash, and has killed at least 100 million trees in the U.S. alone.

It remains a constant problem in Toronto. It’s estimated that the city will lose up to 860,000 trees over the next decade due to the emerald ash borer.

“Homeowners don’t always know,” said Gorham, “and so they leave some logs on the side of the road that might be infected and someone else picks them up and brings them to the cottage as firewood, spreading the pest to a whole new area.”

At Urban Tree Salvage, once the logs have been cut into smaller pieces of lumber, they are placed in a large kiln where they are heat treated for up to a month.

The wood can then be turned into anything from a coffee table to an iPad stand. Urban Tree also sells individual slabs to people who want to try to make furniture or other pieces on their own.

The company has been taking in felled Toronto trees since it opened its doors 10 years ago, when the business was comprised of Gorham, who has a background in landscaping, and Neist, who previously worked in marketing.

Gorham, who comes from a family of environmentalists, said he was frustrated at the sight of so many city trees being cut down and turned into little more than mulch. He approached Neist with the idea of Urban Tree, a company that also hopes to reduce CO2 emissions by salvaging felled trees.

“At first it was just the two of us, a pick-up truck and a chainsaw,” she said. “And it was difficult because we were the only ones in Canada doing this, and so didn’t have anyone to base ourselves off of.”

Neist said some customers were at first hesitant to purchase certain types of wood not normally commercially sold as lumber, like willow, and staff will get the odd question from patrons about whether there are still pests in the wood, especially termites.

Now the company has grown to about a dozen employees, and ships its products Canada-wide. Gorham says Urban Tree probably gets about .5 per cent of the 10,000 city trees that come down each year for a variety of reasons including disease, storms and urban development.