What's Your Problem? Turning Waste Wood Into Buildings
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Apr 23, 2026 Ben Christensen, co-founder and CEO of Cambium, turns fallen and salvaged trees into scalable building material. He talks about creating demand before supply, building a data layer across a fragmented lumber market, coordinating salvage with local sawmills and truckers, and using cross-laminated timber and AI to make reclaimed wood price-competitive and usable at scale.
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Local Wood Wasted While Imports Fill Demand
- Much of America’s usable wood is wasted locally while similar wood is imported from overseas.
- Ben Christensen discovered firewood in Albuquerque was shipped from Estonia despite piles of local wood nearby, sparking Cambium’s mission.
Supply Chain Fragmentation, Not Shortage, Is The Waste Driver
- The core problem is lack of connective data across 8–10 supply-chain steps, not absence of material.
- Cambium's strategy is to build a data layer that links loggers, sawmills, dryers, distributors and buyers to coordinate flows.
Start With Demand Then Build The Platform
- Create demand first by selling finished material to end customers before trying to digitize the entire supply chain.
- Cambium started by branding and selling Carbon Smartwood to large builders and furniture makers to justify upstream investments.