[Greenbuilding] Plybooboo

[Adam wilson]

Rob,
I'm curious as to how you would propose to use shipping pallets for a finish 
flooring  (solid wood?)
In theory, it sounds great, but have you ever had the pleasure of taking a 
pallett apart?

I got this little 89 nissan car this winter to save on gas, when I chose to 
drive.  I used it to transport some pallets, with a roof rack consisting of 
two sticks (1x2's) held down with suction cups and some "motorcycle straps" 
(a pretty damn funny site with a couple 16' long pallets stacked on top of 
it.  Now I wish I'd taken that picture.)
Recently, after taking numerous carloads back to my house in an effort to 
get some use of this industrial waste, I realized how little wood is 
actually used in a pallet.  That along with the afternoon I spent taking 
them apart and denailing them, I walked away thinking what a huge waste of 
time.
Even though the quality of the pallets I picked up from the lumber yard were 
better than most, the quality was still negligible.  Let's just say I didn't 
see them fit to build my outhouse with them, so the pile is still sitting in 
my drive.

Adam Wilson
Tree Town, MI


>From: "Rob Tom" <ArchiLogic at yahoo.ca>
>To: "greenbuilding at listserv.repp.org" <>
>Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Plybooboo
>Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 19:34:02 -0500
>
>On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 17:57:59 -0500, Andrew Pace, CSI
><andy at safebuildingsolutions.com> wrote:
>
> > This doesn't sound like the US raping a nation to me.  More so, it
> > appears as though the Chinese have figured out capitalism.
>
>In order for capitalism to work, there needs to be a buyer and a seller.
>
>The "justification" that you've provided above is akin to laying the blame
>at the feet of the prostitutes rather than the johns for the circumstances
>of their unsavoury scenario.
>
>The Chinese were practising capitalism long before the White Man even
>dreamed of the existence of the place that would eventually become the USA
>and it's only taken a few short centuries for the lumber resources of the
>US to be depleted to the point that its inhabitants are compelled to
>import flooring lumber from the most populous/one of the oldest nations on
>Earth ?
>
>
> > Your lumber harvesting example seems quite eco-friendly, unless you were
> > a card-carrying PETA member.
>
>To those who would gripe about employing draught horses to haul out saw
>logs from the bush, I would say
>
>      "You've never met a draught horse nor seen one at work in the woods
>have you ?"
>       (They love what they do. And "No", they would not rather be perched
>in front
>      of a TV sucking back brewskis and watching a football game.)
>
>and
>
>     "You've never seen a Timberjack (TM) in action have you ?"
>      (Even the most hard-core gizmologist would have difficult time saying
>      that what it is/does is even vaguely eco-friendly.)
>
>But to get back to the subject at hand (Green flooring choices)...
>
>In all large urban centres in the USA, wooden shipping pallets represent a
>major disposal problem.
>More often than not, those pallets are made of North American hardwoods...
>oak, maple, birch, cherry etc. -- lumber that wouldn't be at all difficult
>to convert into flooring.
>
>So there is definitely no shortage of flooring-suitable lumber in the USA
>and there is really no need to be importing plyboo from China under the
>guise of it being a "sustainable choice for flooring in the USA". It seems
>quite obvious to me that it is not, by any stretch of the imagination.
>
>
>=== * ===
>Rob Tom
>Kanata, Ontario, Canada
><A r c h i L o g i c   at  c h a f f y a h o o   dot   c a >
>winnow the chaff from my edress in your reply
>
>
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