CZARS Scientists Assist Minority Communities and Small Businesses in Urban Wood Waste Utilization

By Zhu H. Ning and Kamran K. Abdollahi

As Americansˇ¦ appetite for wood continues to grow and our nation continues to be a net importer of forest products, municipalities may provide a solution, the utilization (recycling) of municipal wood wastes. The utilization of municipal wood wastes contributes to the conservation of our natural resources while providing an alternative source of wood for wood markets that otherwise would be lost.


The Southern University Wood Conservation and Recycling Workshop Series

Southern Universityˇ¦s Urban and Community Forestry Program is assisting the small minority businesses, industry and urban communities to reduce wood waste, increase the re-use of wooden products and recycle those that cannot be re-used. The Wood Conservation and Recycling Workshop Series, funded by the USDA Forest Service, address a wide range of topics, such as, current issues municipalities face with tree removal and disposal,  pallet recycling, small diameter trees, urban wood usages, construction and demolition wood residuals recycling.


Marketing Mulch Made of Wood Waste for Minority Small Businesses

Wood waste that cannot be used in its original form can be processed into a variety of products. These include compost for soil improvement, mulch for weed control, sawdust for animal bedding, wood flour for cleaning up spills, wood chips for landscaping or trail stabilization, and fuel pellets or pressed wood fireplace logs for wood stoves. The SU scientists assist and provide information to the southeast region minority small business owners and farmers on how to start a business by marketing mulch that is made of urban wood waste. Wood waste comes from both commercial and residential activities. It can include scrap lumber, pallets, sawdust, tree stumps, branches, and twigs. Some sources of wood waste are building construction and demolition, wooden crates and pallets, furniture manufacturing, old movie sets, landscaping, lumber mills, and branches and trees removed from orchards.  The urban wood wastes are often from tree care services (Picture 1). These wood wastes can be centralized (Picture 2) and chipped into mulch (Picture 3) and further decomposed into mulch (Picture 4) to be used in the landscape management such as mulch around the base of a tree, flower bed, further composted and mixed with soil for potting and planting. The mulch and composts are environmentally safe, value added, and highly profitable for the minority businesses and are beneficial for the sustainable management of the urban natural resources and ecosystems.


Research Aimed at Quantifying the Impacts of Biobased Plant Residues on Nutrient Management and Growth of Urban Landscape Trees

To serve the communities more effectively by addressing critical conservation issues which are important to the nation, the SU scientists, funded by the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and  Extension Service (CSREES) are conducting research on quantifying the impacts of biobased plant residues on nutrient management and growth of urban landscape trees. The research aims at determining 1.  effect of  biobased mulches chemical composition, nitrogen addition and particle length on the decay and nitrogen mineralization rates of available organic materials;  2.  effects of several urban tree biobased  mulches on the dynamics of growth and development (physiology, morphology, and anatomy) of landscape trees and their associated rhizosphere dynamics;  3. impact of  several urban biobased plant residue mulches on carbon cycling and sequestration; and 4. effects of biobased mulch on root disease severity of selected landscape tree rhizosphere, microbial population dynamics, and saprophytic survival of selected soil borne plant  pathogens.
 

       
Picture 1. Urban wood wastes can be from tree pruning, removal and other types of tree maintenance practices.
 

Picture 2. Tree branches, twigs, and other urban wood wastes are centralized and ready to be processed.
 

Picture 3. A wood chipper is used to chip the tree branches, twigs, etc. into small pieces from which the mulch is produced
 

Picture 4. Mulch piles ready to be packed and shipped for landscape uses