Urban areas in US cities are estimated to lose an average of 36 million trees every year. This results in economic losses of up to $786 million and risks having an adverse impact on already worsening climate change. The worse part? Many of these trees are considered “waste” and sent off to landfills. “More wood from cities goes into landfills than is harvested from US National Forests,” says J. Morgan Grove, a research forester at Baltimore Field Station, USDA Forest Service. “40% of this wood can be reused for furniture, flooring, outdoor play areas, mulch, compost, soil improvements, bioenergy and even carbon sources for growing mushrooms.”
