AASHTO Journal - Video: Inside DDOT’s Wood Reclamation Program

A new video highlights the wood reclamation program established by the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT) in Washington, D.C.; a program that turns trees cut down, due to age, health, or construction projects into a wide variety of useful products – everything from benches and doors to birdhouses.

[Above photo by DDOT]

“We’re trying to save trees that are removed in the city for a variety of reasons and give them a second life,” explained Shaun McKim, an arborist with DDOT’s Urban Forestry Division, in the video.

“These trees are taken down because they’ve become dead or hazardous. Or maybe there’s some impending road construction that won’t allow them to be there,” he added. “[But] this wood is still very useful and it can have a second life. [We can] make stuff with the wood that is removed in the city.”

Launched in 2019, DDOT’s Urban Forestry Division specifically seeks to work with local schools and students to teach them about tree biology and decomposition.

Many state departments of transportation are involved in programs and projects to recycle and/or reuse the wood from trees removed for a variety of reasons – especially after major weather events, such as floods or hurricanes.

For example, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet worked with the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet and other state agencies on a “debris-to-mulch” project that turned thousands of trees downed by major flooding across Eastern Kentucky in early 2023 into beneficial mulch made available for commercial sale.

Nearly 100,000 tons of wood debris were sent to one of two Kentucky mulching facilities for re-use as part of this program, KYTC said; wood debris ultimately produced about 160,000 cubic yards of mulch, equivalent to almost 2.1 million bags of the mulch product typically sold in home improvement stores.

Meanwhile, the Maryland Department of Transportation helps sponsor a tree-planting grant program that supports a broad initiative to plant five million trees across Maryland by 2031.

The Urban Tree Grant Program – which is a partnership between the Maryland DOT, the Maryland Urban and Community Forest Committee, and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources – has awarded over $120,000 across more than 40 communities since launching in 2022, resulting in the planting of about 2,000 trees.

That program supports the “Growing 5 Million Trees” initiative – established by the “Tree Solutions Now Act” passed by the state legislature in 2021 – that is led by a commission chaired by the Maryland Department of the Environment.