Parker Rittgers: prospering as environmental concern grow.

• Author: Mullins, Jeff
• Position: TIMBER

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In Alaska, and throughout the world, entrepreneurs are finding success when they offer goods and services that contribute to the environment in demonstrably positive ways. Anchorage's Parker Rittgers is one who has seen the green of recycling wood. Through the use of a thin-kerf (cut) sawmill technology, Rittgers transforms logs that would otherwise be wasted or underutilized into quality products valued in the marketplace. The result is significantly reduced carbon/greenhouse gas emissions into the earth's atmosphere and reductions in the need to log in healthy forests. As Alaskans progress in finding practical ways to be environmentally responsible and sensitive to reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases, they are, according to Rittgers, gravitating toward operations like his.

EVEN SKEPTICS AGREE

While there may be controversy regarding greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, most on all sides of the issue would agree that where greenhouse gases can be reduced with little difficulty or expense, or even at a profit, they ought to be. Although the entrepreneurial Rittgers purchased a sawmill to meet his personal need for lumber, he now mills lumber for profit and has grown to realize that in addition to me machines accuracy and reliability, its environmental contribution is increasingly important to potential customers, and his business is thriving.

Rittgers says his enterprise rose out of a desire to put to good use a forest of spruce trees killed by beetles on the 1-acre home site he had purchased.

"When I realized I could purchase a top-of-the-line band sawmill for what I was expecting to spend for just the plywood for my house and then use that mill to create my own lumber from trees that would otherwise go to waste, it became an easy decision to go with the mill," he says.

As he worked on his own project, others noticed what Rittgers was up to and began to ask him to mill lumber for them. Today, Rittgers produces fine lumber for both residential and commercial customers throughout the region surrounding Anchorage.

RECOVERING WOOD

One way businesses demonstrate an environmental consciousness is by reducing the waste of natural resources. "I manufacture high-quality environmentally sensitive products, valued by end users, from trees that would otherwise be underutilized or simply wasted," Rittgers points out. By recovering high-quality lumber, the carbon in the wood is sequestered (trapped) in a durable wood...