It’s a scene that plays out in cities and suburbs across America: A tree gets cut down, and instead of being milled into lumber, the whole thing gets shredded.
There are a range of reasons why, none of which have sat well with Ben Christensen. Christensen grew up in New Mexico among the state’s towering pines, and if that wasn’t enough to instill a healthy respect for trees, his family is steeped in timber, including his father who is a carpenter and woodworker.
In nearly every case, the biggest reason that wood gets wasted is coordination, Christensen said. “If you’re a tree care service, you’re incentivized to get to your next booking,” he told TechCrunch. “If you have to drive out of your way to drop off logs somewhere that would reuse them, it’s not going to work.”
Christensen, along with Marisa Repka and Theo Hooker, sensed opportunity in the wasted wood, founding Cambium. The startup reuses wood that would otherwise be sent to the chipper or the burn pile, and it does that mostly through software to connect and coordinate disparate parts of the supply chain.
Cambium’s main selling point is that they can help companies buy or sell more wood, depending on which side of the transaction they’re on. The startup promises better service and more consistent, long-term contracts.
Part of the way it does that is by developing its own products. Cambium has developed techniques to ensure consistency from historically inconsistent sources of wood. It works with suppliers and mills to make the products, and it sells the products to companies like Room and Board and Steelcase.
In addition to selling furniture grade lumber, Cambium also produces cross-laminated timber, an engineered wood that’s formed into panels, working in partnership with manufacturers including Mer …