Improving lives with value added wood, Costa Rica

Wood from trees grown by farmers is more than precious. It has taken years of hard work and maintainance of each plantation to obtain beautiful sawn boards, which capture carbon dioxide as they become part of a home or furniture. 

ASIREA is working dollar by dollar towards the goal of drying our sawn wood to obtain higher prices as a high quality product in a market where most local wood is sold humid.  If farmers percieve better income they will plant more trees...which will in turn capture more carbon dioxide, protect soils and water and just be beautiful... making the world a better place. It makes sense. 

We have not reached our funding goal to buy a solar wood kiln...but we are trying to dry wood at a kiln as a step in the right direction.  This makes the wood more expensive and therefore less competitive because we have to transport the wood 50 kilómeters to dry it and also pay for this service. Still we want to share with you the fact that we are really making the effort and the good news is that the wood has lost 80% humidity in about a month and in about two weeks we start on our first sales. 

We are also developing modern furniture models and local furniture makers are making them- and we hope to be opening a new market for smaller pieces of wood which are discarded or sold for very little by making furniture for many local wood workers.

Some days it seems like we are going uphill, but we truely believe in what we are doing: creating an option for a really green industry with local participation. We are doing the "teach how to fish part" and you are with us. Our success will be the base for success in other places in Costa Rica and other countries. Thank you for walking this path with us.