Forest Products: More than Wood and Paper

Whenever I give a class presentation, I ask the students to list products we get from trees. The first two answers are usually wood and paper. And that’s absolutely right. We get loads of useful wood and paper products from our trees.

Sometimes they’re useful and beautiful:

Also, music just wouldn’t be the same if there were no wood to make acoustic guitars.

But trees make so much more than just wood and paper. There are lots of other products, some that you may use every day, that are made of trees.

For example, we get latex from trees. Life wouldn’t be as sanitary without latex.

And rubber is made using latex. Imagine life without this stretchy, resilient, waterproof stuff? It would make driving vehicles, scuba diving, and jumping in puddles much more difficult!

We can also make plastic products using trees. Plastic bottles and containers are very convenient, but they have traditionally been made using petroleum, which is not a renewable resource. Each year, nearly 40 billion petroleum-based plastic bottles are dumped into landfills. It will take centuries for this plastic to break down. But there is a solution! Replacing the petroleum with plant materials creates plastic products that look and function the same as the plastic you’ve always known, but instead are made from a renewable resource, and are way more biodegradable. These plant-based bottles are also just as recyclable as their petroleum-based counterparts. For more information on plant-based bottles, check out Tree Hugger.

Plants also provide ingredients for some of the foods we eat. Cellulose, which is the building block of the tree, also acts like a glue and can be used to control the consistency of foods. Mustard, ice cream, salad dressing, and several other foods can contain cellulose. Even toothpaste and gum (which I hope you don’t eat!) often contain cellulose.

These are just some of the many products we get from trees. Check out our Industry page to see some more of the products we get from our forests.

There are even some products made from trees even though it would be much more practical to make them from other materials. For instance, the wooden bow tie!