SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Hundreds of trees were felled around the Bay Area during the rainstorms earlier this month.
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One East Bay company doesn’t want the wood to go to waste, and is turning some of those ancient arbors into armchairs.
"Typically when an urban tree comes down, it gets chipped up and thrown away," said Nick Harvey, the owner of Bay Area Redwood, a company that works to keep fallen trees out of landfills.
Harvey has been quite busy recently, cutting up the trees that fell during the recent storms and turning them into chairs, tables, desks and other types of furniture.
The company works often directly with owners of the property where trees have fallen, and the tree owner can ask for a variety of options for their new wooden furniture piece.
"That's a true type of embodied carbon," said Harvey. "That carbon is stored in the wood forever."
"Ultimately we turn them into building materials, we turn them into furniture," he said. Standing desks have been especially popular lately.
"The reason is many people are working at home now, and since people are working at home, they want to bring actually nature into their home," he said.
In recent weeks there have been more than the usual amount of trees to work with.
"You can see where the roots are inundated with water right there," said Harvey. "And this is exactly what's happening."
But it’s not just the storms to blame for this in particular, the drought has played a hand as well.
"After being stressed by drought, they've now just had a huge amount of rain that’s come and they really can't take it," he said.
Harvey works with homeowners and commercial developers alike to recycle fallen trees in the Bay Area.
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