A Baltimore County startup has raised $5.3 million to use wood normally destined for the landfill to create tables, floors and other construction products.
Cambium Carbon takes wood from trees that fall down during a storm or are cut down at construction sites and repurposes them for new uses. CEO Ben Christensen plans to use the latest round of funding led by MaC Venture Capital to add new products, launch a nationwide expansion and enhance the software side of the business. Other participants in the funding round include Blue Pool Capital, Rise of the Rest, and Alumni Ventures, as well as new investors such as Connecticut Innovations and Gaingels. The round closed on Dec. 1.
The Arbutus company partners with local governments and private companies to take trees that need to be cut down and give them a new life as a desk or the floors of a home. Most trees that fall down in a storm are chopped up into mulch or sent to a landfill, Christensen said. Wood that is rotting away in a landfill is wasted since it can often still be useful as timber for construction.
There is no shortage of wasted wood for Cambium to draw from to build its trademark "Carbon Smart Wood" products. The Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 2018 that 18.1 million tons of wood is burned, turned into mulch or simply sent into a landfill. By saving those trees from the landfill, Cambium hopes to reduce the number of living trees that need to be cut down for use as timber.
The company acquired Baltimore Fallen Lumber last year to add manufacturing capacity and already has several recognizable clients. Cambium partnered with Patagonia's Baltimore store to build racks and tables and built a conference table and reception desk for National Geographic’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. Christensen wants to take the company beyond desks and tables to enter a wider market. To that end, Cambium is going to start building outdoor decks with its repurposed wood to reach more possible customers.
“You can only create so much impact selling conference tables,” Christensen said.
The company hopes to sell these products across the country, targeting California, the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest for expansion. The software arm of the business, Traece, is key to the company’s national growth by offering services to businesses in the industry outside of in-house manufacturing. The software, acquired by Cambium in 2021, gives lumber producers the opportunity to search through a large online portfolio of wood products and track transactions. Traece also measures the carbon impact of timber products, Christensen said.
In 2022, the company reported that 817,000 board feet of wood, a phrase for a piece of lumber a foot wide and one inch thick, were salvaged on the platform. Cambium hopes that making wood intended for the landfill easier to find and cheaper to acquire will help reduce the timber industry’s carbon footprint by encouraging companies to pursue more green alternatives to cutting down living trees.
Baltimore has seen several startups similar to Cambium Carbon work to recycle materials that would otherwise go to waste. The Traece software is similar to what Baltimore startup Matium offers for the plastics industry. One of the area’s most successful startups in recent years, Apkudo offers recycling services to reduce waste from laptops and mobile phones. Christensen believes that making it easier for large companies in specific industries like timber to recycle is a key part of fighting climate change.
“We really believe that a lot of climate solutions come in big industries that are overlooked,” he added.
