Atlanta Wood Foundation Reusing Trees, One at a Time

A new organization in the Georgia city is repurposing fallen trees for furniture and other secondary uses.

Georgia has long been known for its forests and as a key supplier for lumber for the building trade. But an Atlanta non-profit organization is harvesting timber on a much smaller scale as a way to repurpose fallen trees.

The Atlanta Wood Foundation, based in a city that at 50 percent is reported to have the highest proportion of overall urban tree canopy in the nation, is retrieving salvaged trees and processing the wood to produce furniture-grade lumber and live-edge wood slabs, which they sell to DIYers, woodworkers and artisans.

Just before the pandemic hit, area woodworkers Kelly and Ali Syed began a custom furniture making business but as Covid complicated supply chains they ran into problems sourcing materials. “The cost of wood got crazy because people were doing so many renovations to their home, which also caused issues with the supply chain,” says Kelly Syed.

Together with a friend, Chris Tappan, they decided to start a nonprofit organization that would allow them get donated wood from local fallen trees and repurpose it for furniture, building materials and other uses. Operating out of a warehouse on the east side of town and using its website for ordering, the Atlanta Wood Foundation is starting to attract customers…and attention.  

Atlanta magazine described it as “a true labor of love, operating on evenings and weekends and between the demands of the owners’ respective day jobs. It relies on wood donations from tree companies, small and big, but also from private landowners, who can get a tax credit based on the dollar value of usable lumber they donate.”

The magazine said that since the foundation started “getting wood has turned out to be the easiest part of the equation: Donations have come in steadily, but finding customers has been more difficult. With time, between word of mouth, social media posts and traffic to their online store, the foundation is slowly gaining visibility.”

One such customer, local furniture maker Ryan Clark, likes what the organization is doing. “A lot of my clients like the idea of saving a tree from the landfill.”

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