Carlisle Wide Plank Floors

Explaining “Chain-of-Custody” for Carlisle’s reclaimed wood floors

Many of our customers come to us asking for reclaimed wood for their future floor project. Our antique or reclaimed wood comes from old barns or abandoned mills, mostly along the eastern seaboard. We work with suppliers who find the structures and view the wood they contain with a critical eye. That’s important to us as we assure that our customers get a high quality product from a structure that may have been standing some 200 years ago!

When we purchase reclaimed wood, we seek certification for it—called a “Chain of Custody” certification—from the Forest Stewardship Council. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an independent, not for profit, non-government organization. The mission of the Forest Stewardship Council is to support environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world’s forests.

Here’s how the Forest Council described the “Chain of Custody” certification:

“FSC Chain of Custody is an information trail about the path taken by products from the forest or, in the case of recycled materials, from the reclamation site to the consumer including each stage of processing, transformation, manufacturing, and distribution where progress to the next stage of the supply chain involves a change of ownership.

FSC certification of such management systems is designed to provide a credible guarantee to customers, whether business, government or end consumer, that products which are sold (i.e. invoiced and possibly labeled) with a specified FSC certificate code are originating from well-managed forests, controlled sources, reclaimed materials, or a mixture of these. FSC Chain of Custody certification thereby facilitates the transparent flow of goods made from such materials through the supply chain.”

The certification requires us at Carlisle to document the location of the original structure, when it was built and how it was used. What that all comes down to is a guarantee that our reclaimed wood is a quality product about which customers should have no worries. The certification ensures the integrity of the wood.

Once the antique structure is purchased, it is carefully dismantled and our suppliers select the best, most stable wood to become a Carlisle floor. The wood is cut into usable lengths, sliced into one-inch thick planks and then stacked, kiln-dried, graded and shipped to our Stoddard, New Hampshire headquarters. Once it arrives here, we inspect it again for quality, grade, character, volume and moisture content before we craft it into somebody’s custom floor. Throughout the process, it is tracked for FSC compliance.

*Read more about certifications and our environmental efforts here.*

Posted on December 2, 2009 at 10:33 AM in Green Building • (0) Comments

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