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CELEBRATING THE WORLD'S MOST RENEWABLE RESOURCE
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Forests are a vital resource to our way of life. Many goods spring to mind when thinking of the ways we use forest products - paper products, lumber, flooring, furniture, etc. But many others, including cosmetics, anti-cancer drugs and even chewing gum, might not be so obvious.

More than 5,000 products come from wood, and with the world's population soaring to more than 6 billion, the demand on our nation's forests has never been greater. Extreme environmental groups have tried for years to convince us that the demand on the forests has become too great and that we are running out of trees. But those groups have failed to mention that there are environmentalists working to ensure that future generations will enjoy forests as abundant and diverse as the ones we enjoy today. Perhaps they don't want that information leaked because of who those working environmentalists are - the forest products industry.

Webster's dictionary defines the term environmentalist as "someone who works to protect the environment from destruction or pollution." The North American forest products industry is responsible for planting well over half of the 2.15 billion trees planted each year. The success of these efforts was reflected in the last two United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's "State of the World's Forests" reports, which indicated that forest cover had increased by 20 percent in the last 30 years. Based on those figures, it seems fitting to refer to an industry that works to ensure a sound future for our forests as environmentalists.

Manufacturers of products such as steel, concrete, plastic and other wood-substitutes are determined to convince Americans that their products are better for the environment than wood because they do not harvest any trees. It is true that the products they produce require that no trees be harvested. But it is also true that the minerals used to manufacture wood substitutes, including ores and petroleum, are being depleted at an increasingly rapid. And once those natural resources are depleted, they are gone forever. Wood products, on the other hand, come from the world's most renewable resource: trees.

Furthermore, substitute products require quite a bit more energy to manufacture than wood. For example, it takes nine times as much energy to produce a steel stud as it does to produce a wood stud, which further depletes finite supplies of fossil fuels and coal. Of all the common building products, wood requires the lowest amount of energy to produce and has the least impact on air and water quality.

National Forest Products Week is a great time to celebrate all the benefits our forests provide. If we continue to support our forest products industry by using wood-based products, we can be sure that they will continue to work towards a bright future for our forests.