Hayward Lumber pushes eco-friendly forest products

Just inside the lobby of the Hayward Lumber corporate offices in the Ryan Ranch business center, a chart sits propped up on a table. On the chart, a very steep line plots the course of population expansion in California over the past 100 years. A little more than one million people in 1900 have swollen to more than 33 million today.

For a Monterey-based lumber company with $120 million in sales, it might be taken as good news that the California population chart follows the trajectory of a Patriot missile. After all, everyone needs some kind of a roof overhead, and Hayward Lumber just happens to specialize in roof trusses.

But the chart is not necessarily meant as an encouraging business forecast.

Taped alongside the chart are grim predictions of an American population rocketing from 280 million today to 348 million over the next 50 years. The consequences are made obvious with the note that such a leap is equivalent to adding five cities the size of Los Angeles to the U.S.

Why would a lumber company greet visitors with gloomy predictions? The simple answer: Survival.

Left unchecked and unenlightened, Americans apparently would log and drill and mine until there was nothing left but stumps and dry holes. Vice President Dick Cheney belittles energy conservation as "a personal virtue." Nevertheless, some business people recognize the use of sustainable resources--such as tiles made from discarded glass and lumber culled from carefully managed forests--as good, forward-thinking business.

At Hayward Lumber, Steve Brauneis, who has a Master''s degree in international environmental policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, draws up strategic environmental plans to grow his company without damaging the planet.

"One of our goals is to provide a sustainable business model for the lumber industry," says Brauneis. "History has shown us what we''ve done with the forests. It''s not so much running out of material, it''s preserving what we do have."

On a recent Monday afternoon, Brauneis had just come back from the dedication of the company''s new roof truss factory site in Santa Maria. The 50,000 square-foot factory will be built according to "sustainable" principles that require attention to reducing overall impact on the earth.

When it''s complete, the plant will produce roof trusses made with lumber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The FSC has strict requirements to ensure that conscientious forest management produced the wood marked with its brand.

As Brauneis explains, the fundamental idea behind "sustainable" construction is to consider "life cycles." As he puts it, even if the materials that make up your living room are not giving off noxious gases, "somebody else had to deal with it" when it was manufactured. In the same way, FSC-certified wood has to meet a long checklist requiring compliance with endangered species laws, respect for the rights of indigenous people, use of low-impact harvesting methods and more.

Hayward pushes FSC-certified wood because, among other things, building with it is "the right thing to do," Brauneis says.

A home made entirely of certified wood can run at a premium of 8 percent. Less than 5 percent of Hayward''s sales are in certified wood and recycled product. Still, there may come a time when a station-wagon load of non-certified lumber for the patio project takes on the pariah status of baby-seal fur coats and swordfish.

FSC wood is already beginning to sell. "It''s more marketable," Brauneis says. "We are finding out there are people who want it."

Besides putting sustainable practices to work in its own projects, Hayward encourages customers to do the same. The company has 500 copies of a book called Building with a Vision that it will be providing to customers who have shown an interest in sustainable building materials.

The book--printed on recycled paper, of course--is the second in a series: the "Wood Reduction Trilogy," from Watershed Media, based in Healdsburg, Calif. Hayward sponsored the project, with the help of the (Ted) Turner Foundation and other endowments and funds.

Author Dan Imhoff takes encouragement from a lumber company''s support.

"I think it was really important because it was a nod from the industry in support of the project," say Imhoff. "Hayward was the first one to say it really matters how the forests are treated where that wood comes from. That''s a big step."

theWeeklyTally

12 Number of homicides that have taken place in Monterey County since Jan. 1, 2001. Nine have been in Salinas; the other three were in Soledad, Greenfield and Gonzales. Last year the county had 29 murders.

--Source: Source: Coroner''s Office of Monterey County