This startup is creating a global technological platform for recycled wood

Every year, 36 million trees fall due to decomposition, disease, natural disasters or compensation for new development. The vast majority of these trees are burned, send themselves to a landfill or slow down for the mulch, which waste energy and causes carbon emissions.

Now, a new technology is being used to find, transport and recycle that wood and make it useful once again.

Cambium is a startup with the aim of interrupting the wood recycling space. Their researchers based in Baltimore are working on new ways of tracking, treating and transferring old wood to the supply chain. It is invoiced as the “where wood is found with technology.”

“We make it really easy to obtain wood that would otherwise have wasted and build technology for the wooden industry so that we can save material, create new local jobs and address climate change at scale,” said CEO Ben Christensen.

Each piece of “Carbon Smart” wood from Cambium has a barcode. Scan, and the Cambium application will identify what the species is, when it was ground and what is its rating.

Cambium technology helps to find, recycle and then deliver wood in the United States and parts of Canada. The company works with local trees care services, truck and sawmill companies, as well as companies such as Amazon, CbreGensler and room and table.

“We help the truckers to coordinate the charges so that they can move this material, and then we help the sawmills to obtain that material, they track that material when they really use it inside their sawmill and then finally also sell that material,” said Christensen.

While there are local wooden recyclers, no one else goes to the supply chain at the national scale, said Christensen, adding that he hopes that it will eventually be globalized. This potential is attractive to investors.

“For us, as a risk capitalist who seeks to invest in businesses that can go to the Moon and become businesses of one billion dollars, this meets all criteria,” said Adrian Fenty, founding managing partner of Mac Venture Capital.

Cambium is also backed by Volo Earth Ventures, Nea and the Rise of the Rest Seed Semiled Fund, among others. The startup has raised $ 28.5 million in total funds so far.

If it were possible to save all the discarded wood material in the United States, humans could obtain approximately half of our total demand, said Christensen.

Cambium doubled his sales last year, and Christensen said the great growth was on the software side. Their income comes from direct sales of wood to end users and software sales to the wood industry to facilitate movement, monitoring and sale of recycled product.

“It is essential for Silicon Valley investors, because we don’t want to invest in a wooden company,” said Fenty. “We do not want to invest in a construction company. We want to invest in a software company.”

Among the challenges ahead are Trump administration tariffs on Canadian wood, said Christensen. These rates are expected to affect Cambium business, especially in the northeastern region of the United States.

“We are moving material to sawmills that are 10 or 20 miles away across the border, so obviously commercial policy really affects how that material moves,” Christensen said.

The CNBC producer, Lisa Rizzolo, contributed to this piece.