Wood Products in Our Daily Lives

No matter where you are this very moment, chances are there’s a product made with wood right within your reach. Oregon dominates U.S. production of softwood lumber and plywood. Today it is also a leader in engineered wood, and home to the first mill in the United States to manufacture structurally certified cross-laminated timber or CLT. This means your house or apartment, or even your office building, could have been built using wood products made right here in the state.

Forest Fact Break: Wood Products
This 90-second animated video looks at wood products. We use trees for all kinds of daily items. Some are pretty obvious; others, not so much. But when you consider that wood is one of our greatest renewable resources, it’s probably a good idea to use wood for whatever we can. This video is part of OFRI’s Forest Fact Breaks series, which uses bold animated graphics, sound effects and narration to teach about natural resource topics in a fun, easy-to-understand way.

Made in Oregon

Oregon’s wood products industry is a traded sector, with close to 75 percent of all products made here sold outside the state. This generates revenue that supports mill jobs in Oregon timber towns. Here are some of the many different types of products that can be made from trees harvested in Oregon:

softwood lumber, such as dimension lumber, beams, wood paneling, siding, door and window frames and furniture parts
plywood from softwood veneer
hardwood lumber and plywood used in cabinetry, millwork, furniture and flooring
engineered wood products, such as laminated veneer lumber, glulam beams and columns, finger-jointed lumber, I-beams, cross-laminated timber and other products
composite wood products, such as particleboard, hardboard and fiberboard, made largely from residuals generated by sawmills and plywood mills
posts, poles and timbers, such as utility poles, house logs, fence posts, pilings, treated timbers, cross-arms and railroad ties
pulp and paper products from wood fiber, including packaging, printing paper, newsprint, tissue, toweling, absorbents, adhesives and fluff pulp
millwork, including products such as cabinets, furniture and fencing
biomass energy from mills burning wood waste to generate heat and electricity for manufacturing, or power plants replacing coal with timber harvest waste
heating uses such as wood pellets and bricks made from sawdust and mill residue
other wood products, including shipping pallets, pencils and musical instruments

The ultimate green building material

In addition to being beautiful and durable, wood is gaining increasing recognition in the architecture, engineering and construction communities as a green building product with important environmental advantages over other materials.

Wood is derived from a renewable resource and requires less energy and water to produce than other materials. It’s also the only major building material that stores carbon, which is removed from the atmosphere as trees grow. Because of this, wood buildings serve as massive carbon storage units, helping offset carbon emissions that are a major contributor to climate change.

Forest Fact Break: Green Building
This 90-second animated video looks at the environmental advantages of using wood building products. Carbon sequestration? Check. More environmentally friendly manufacturing process? Check. Sourced locally? Check. There’s a lot to consider in less than two minutes. This video is part of OFRI’s Forest Fact Breaks series, which uses bold animated graphics, sound effects and narration to teach about natural resource topics in a fun, easy-to-understand way.