E117: Reinventing Wood Without Trees

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we’re starting the year with an audacious question: what if we reinvented one of the most basic materials in the world?

Decarbonizing the built environment means tackling the stuff we use everywhere — wood, concrete, and steel — at the same time we’re trying to build millions of new homes, strengthen supply chains, and reduce our exposure to geopolitical and climate risk. That’s a tall order. But it’s also unavoidable.

My guest is Nathan Silvernail, co-founder and CEO of Plantd, a company building a tree-free, carbon-negative alternative to engineered wood. Designed as a drop-in replacement for OSB (oriented strand board), Plantd’s material looks and behaves like conventional wood — but without cutting down trees. And they’re not stopping at the material itself: Plantd is building the machines, manufacturing process, and agricultural supply chain needed to produce it at scale.

We talk about:

• Why “sustainable wood” isn’t always as sustainable as it sounds
• Why trees can’t scale fast enough to meet demand and climate goals
• What it takes to replace a commodity material without asking builders to change how they build
• The co-benefits: turning waste into biochar and high-purity carbon for adjacent industrial markets
• The hard realities of scaling hardware, agriculture, and manufacturing at the same time

LINKS:

• Plantd: https://www.plantdmaterials.com/
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