Redwood enhances the beauty and lasting quality of any proiect

ff,tvr You, or any of your Ilfriends in the business, ever been approached by a customer who says, "That composite deck is just beautifuM can't wait to get some chairs or a garden bench made out of the same stuff."

I didn't think so.

Compared to redwood, which is naturally beautiful and durable, with a structural integrity that can't be replicated, composite lumber suffers. It's no wonder that redwood is used in a wide variety of home projects, while composite lumberjust is not.

In fact, redwood is the ideal wood product for just about any home project-indoors or out. With its natural resistance to shrinking, warping and checking, using redwood lumber on your project means you built it to last a long,long time.

Whether the project is furniture, cabinetry, planters, fences, trellises, pergolas, buildings, and, of course, decks, there are a wide variety of redwood boards, siding and timbers for almost any application suitable for wood. And since redwood is naturally durable, it is the ideal choice for use in garden beds, planter boxes and greenhouses for organic gardens.

For professionals working with redwood, they'll agree that redwood as a product provides greater flexibility of application than man-made products. It's a material that's easier to cut, won't bend or warp, and can be left natural or stained to complement a customer's chosen color palate. Over the years, redwood can be restored repeatedly with minimal effort and cost.

Not only is it beautiful to look at and beautiful to work with, redwood is also a beautiful thing for helping the envi- ronment. You can't say the same thing about composite lumber. Compare the energy consumed to harvest and manufacture redwood (a renewable resource) to the process required to produce plastic/composite decking (consuming nonrenewable oil resources), and it's pretty clear that a natural product is far preferable. Consider:

Redwood trees need soil, sun and water to grow. No oil wells are drilled for raw materials that a plastic-composite deck needs.

As these trees grow, they capture and store carbon, essentially cleaning the air around them. That carbon is locked in; even after harvesting and milling, a redwood deck retains that carbon. A plastic-composite deck consumes 15 times more energy than a redwood deck- and 87Vo of that energy comes from nonrenewable fossil fuels, a major source of carbon emissions

Even when redwood lives out its usefulness, the lumber is biodegradable, returning to the earth to help make more trees. Composite decking is not recycled; it is often sent to the landfill.

Redwood can inspire great ideas, and then be the perfect material to make that idea reality. The versatility and durability of redwood is a quality that can't be matched in nature or a laboratory. For the project that may be just the beginning for a customer, recommending redwood ensures the look and feel of the project will be consistently harmonious, start to finish.

- Charlie Jourdain is president of the Califurnia Redwood Association. Reach him at charlie@calredwood.org or (888) CAL-REDWOOD. To learn more about redwood, visit www .calredwood.org

By Carla Waldemar