Design +
Product Development
Over the past 25 years, Paul Hickman, Urban Ashes (UA) CEO and principal has developed a commitment to design and product development that is equaled by his devotion to incorporate environmental sustainability and social justice in every project. By drawing upon an assiduously cultivated palette of materials, resources and techniques, UA is able to help develop and deliver sustainable non-toxic products that reflect both space and client. The process is imperative — and many times is left visible so that we can remember that process of coming into being. Drawing on years of experience with simple, sometimes unconventional, natural materials and highly refined techniques, the products are intended to evoke an emotional awareness of its elegance yet blend subtly into the most rustic or polished environments.
With urban and deconstructed wood at the core UA also has a unique capacity to incorporate a wide variety of other materials to compliment and accentuate the wood. The pallet is virtually unlimited.
Municipal
Consulting
Urban Wood Utilization Infrastructure - Urban Ashes collaborates with municipalities and businesses to design, develop and implement a self-sustaining urban wood utilization program based upon their Circular UrbanWood Triconomy™ Model to maximize the social, environmental, and economic benefits of the communities fallen urban trees.
The Details - Circular UrbanWood Triconomies™ or the CUT Model™, identifies and establishes the missing systems, networks, markets and businesses needed to help municipalities meet their net-zero and sustainability goals. By empowering the community to divert their fallen urban trees from the waste stream and utilize these often-wasted natural resources, to their highest and best capacity as the raw materials powering all aspects of the CUT Model, we directly increase their positive environmental and sustainability goals.
Unlike traditional circular economies, Urban Ashes employs the Triconomy model, a circular economy built predominately from Triple Bottom Line businesses. This ensures we maximize the social impact of creating meaningful work, desirable careers, and new businesses opportunities for some of our most disadvantaged folks, our formerly incarcerated and our youth that have had contact with the justice system. This greatly expands and compounds the positive impacts on the entire community, all created through social equity, environmental sustainability, and economic diversity.
As part of, and in addition to building these economies, we partner with designers and manufactures to develop the new wood goods and processes, designed to tuck right into the urban wood utilization process.
The Circular UrbanWood Triconomy™ (CUT) model diverts wood from the waste stream, invests in the highest level of organics recycling, develops urban milling and manufacturing infrastructure, expands tree planting, creates opportunities for startups, and reduces unemployment and recidivism for our returning citizens while giving purpose and direction to our at-risk youth.
Urban Ashes leverages its 10 years of experience as a national manufacturer of wood goods and Founder, Paul Hickman’s 25 years of experience in green building and urban wood utilization to build the networks needed for municipalities, businesses and universities to build Circular UrbanWood Triconomies™ (CUT).
By repurposing our fallen urban trees, they divert valuable local natural resources from the waste stream and continue to sequester the carbon captured within the finished wood goods. By engaging all the businesses across the full circle of industries, Urban Ashes works to promote the employment and careers of our most disadvantaged citizens, our formerly incarcerated and our youth that have had contact with the justice system. The creation of the CUT model builds environmental sustainability, social equity and economic diversity to revitalize our communities.
Simply put, Urban Ashes designs and facilitates the creation of triple bottom line economies (Triconomy™) built around the utilization of our fallen urban trees and the reforestation of our urban forests, while providing jobs and careers to our citizens with the most barriers to employment.