„Bis bald im Wald!“
…called somebody out of one of our meeting points in our legendary barrel storage ‘B48’. We had young students as guest. Felix with Ardelle, Simon, Franzi, Paul, Tobi and Lea who are all very engaged to inform people about the forest, it`s functions and benefits.
Through their institution “Forst erklärt”, supported by Landesforsten Rheinland-Pfalz, the regional wood supplier #1.
Together with Felix, Ardelle, Jan and Franzi I have been at the forest with Cooper. For to be more accurate on the wood submission yard ‘Albrechtshain’ near Kaiserslautern.
There we talked about the auction system of wood buying, our technical requirements and our high-level quality requirements on the wood as coopers. We discussed possibilities to conserve the forest while and by using wood and we found multiple starting points: Regionality with short transport distances, regional value adding chains, waste reduction, it`s recycling and a respectful treatment of the nature and wood itself.
Sustainability and environmental awareness are heavily discussed subjects to everybody, but how is it possible to bring it together with harvesting and using wood?!
This question came up in our minds unavoidably during our visit at our sawmill at our company W. Eder GmbH.
Well knowing, that environmentally friendliness and protection of the environment is not possible to be broken down on CO2 emissions and consume awareness, we found a next connecting consent.
Trees accumulate CO2 during their growth. As known CO2 accelerates the global warming, which has fatal consequences for humankind and nature. Respective to the positive growing rates German forests, which needs to be operated (for to reduce the anthropologically caused damages and for to bring more climate stability for future climates), it makes sense to use the incidental wood in a long term usage. Like this the bound CO2 can be saved and which product could be better then wooden barrels which can become more than 100 years old ( and which also produce great spirits for example – just by the way…) ?!
Of course there are many more interesting future oriented materials which have to be taken into account in general.
But in comparison to all these many synthetically produced materials which partly cause the emissions of heavily environment incriminating substances one thing is sure: The naturally renewable materials like wood, which is not ‘just’ saving CO2. It can also be seen like a key in a dynamic natural system that provides so many more benefits. The woods themselves are buffers of fresh water, air refreshers, stabilizers of the ground, and so much more. We all visit them for recreational purposes and are happy and fascinated by the impressive flora and fauna.
These woods and the usage of wood is a key to conserve the fundamentally necessary benefits of itself, because we can only plant new future and climate resistant trees when old wood gets out of the forests. Finally all the animals, especially the predators are playing a key role for a healthy, well balanced fauna, which for example does not mean that all young trees are getting eaten by wild animals. For this reason hobby hunting has to be seen critically, because it stops the nature from regulating and balancing itself which is much more efficient and intelligent by far.

Cheers