Are we staying true to our mission? Can we back up the promises we make to our customers? What’s working, and what isn’t? Where do we want to be in five years?”

These are the questions Charles Caron put to himself two years ago as he was buying his family’s third-generation cabinet door company, Caron Industries, with his cousin and the company’s plant manager. 

Based just outside of Quebec City, Caron had a solid reputation for fast lead times and high-quality cabinet doors, door frames, dovetail drawer boxes and countertops. 

“Any new business owner needs to be able to answer these questions in a way that has meaning beyond just the company’s current brand,” said Caron. 

“The answers reflect the vision we bring to the table and should guide us in making a great company even better, especially in a market as competitive as ours. Integrity is very important to our company, and to me personally, so I wanted to take care of the legacy of trust my uncle and father had built in the decades they ran the company.” 

This legacy included, in addition to the operational efficiencies and high product quality standards, the company’s mottos: “Caron thinks green” and “Think wood, think green.”

“I think our company was ahead of its time when we made that our motto back in 2005, way before anyone was talking about sustainability,” said Caron. 

 

“We joined Tree Canada and the American Forest Foundation, which have replanted more trees on our behalf than we have used; we buy only from certified suppliers; we are obsessed with optimizing the use of raw material throughout the entire manufacturing process, so we sell door models with rustic character, made from eco-friendly wood grades and our own wood waste; we use sawdust to heat our facilities; and we ship using 100% recycled cardboard.”

But Caron questioned whether these things really made the company “green.” 

He also questioned whether they were earning the right to say that now, in 2025, and more importantly, does that even matter. Does it bring in more business?

“I know now that the questions I was really asking was, ‘What the hell are all of these certifications, really? What do they mean to me? And what do they mean to designers? To consumers,” he said.

Time for answers
He didn’t realize it at the time, but Caron was asking THE quintessential question as a key player in the wood products industry: “What should I be telling my customers and my market about the sustainability of wood-based products, and who can help me with these answers?”

His timing couldn’t have been better, for two reasons: Demand for sustainable products will only grow and designers are begging for more sustainability information.

The Chief Sustainability Officer of the ASID (American Society of Interior Designers), Jon Strassner participated in the “Carbon Dominator” panel discussion at AWFS about the climate-positive impacts of wood in the building industry. That includes long-term carbon sequestration and the environmental and economic benefits of sustainable forestry as supported by the woodworking industry. 

Strassner told a room full of cabinetmakers at AWFS, “If you ask my members to build their next project out of the most sustainable material they could find, they’re not going to think of wood first. They’re going to spend hours and hours trying to find a better material, because frankly, they don’t know anything about the wood industry. Wood isn’t in their vernacular right now.”
He said that’s a huge opportunity lost, for the wood products industry and for interior designers. 

“The design community really needs to know more about you, about how you can help them reach THEIR sustainability goals,” he said. “It would truly be a win-win. What will it take to put that in motion?”

When someone in the audience said, “We love what we’ve learned here, but we’re just not getting requests for sustainable cabinetry,” Strassner replied: “You will. Look at consumer trends in Europe, and younger generations here. Sustainability is heading to the top of the list when they make purchase decisions. And you don’t want to be left scrambling when you DO get that question.”

The NKBA published a survey of kitchen and bath designers about sustainability in their work. Respondents said that even though consumers aren’t yet beating down the doors for sustainable kitchens, the questions are coming more often. Designers said they’d sure appreciate help talking about more than just LED lighting, Energy Star appliances and low-flow faucets. 

Designers love to lead, they love to educate, and they’re passionate about sustainability. But they don’t have time to do their own research, so this is another fantastic opportunity for suppliers to help Caron Industries educate their design and consumer customers. 

 

Beyond certifications
To answer one of Caron’s questions, what these certifications really mean to designers and consumers is, unfortunately, very little. There are over 600 ecolabels and certifications associated with the building products industry. Outside of a handful of well-known ones, most are just meaningless background noise. 

Commercial designers say that when they ask about the environmental and health-and-wellness impacts of a product, they expect a story, a narrative, that puts all that into context with what they’re trying to achieve. 

Pointing them to a web page full of ecolabels and saying, “It’s all right there, have a look,” is worse than disappointing, it’s disqualifying. 

(Author’s note: I learned this from the head designer at Starwood hotels, later a consultant to Marriott. “If you can’t tell me what’s sustainable about your product or your company when I ask, I know that it’s just not in your company’s DNA, so this conversation is over.”)

“Adding to all of this, wood and natural tones in kitchen design have made a big comeback in the past year and are forecasted to grow for the next years as well. Moreover, our sales of clear-lacquered oak, walnut and even alder have increased dramatically, proving the point,” Caron said. “I think this creates a win-win-win situation. Designers don’t have to ‘force’ people into integrating wood for sustainability reasons. The trend is already there. On top of being trendy, it is the most sustainable material we have. How easy is that? Now they just have to share the story!”

 

Caron’s story
Caron’s sustainability story has evolved to “We build cabinet components, and forests.”

“We started with those tree replanting programs, a great cause and an effort that’s making a difference in the real world,” he said. “But we now know that by sourcing from managed forests with certified suppliers, we’re investing in forests that are healthier now than they were a hundred years ago.” 

Counterintuitive concept
But with all the talk of forest sustainability, the conversation takes a surprising turn.

“There’s this unintuitive, counterintuitive concept that buying products made from wood actually helps forest stay forested,” says Katie Cava, Sustainability Program Manager at Weyerhaeuser, whose MDF is used by Caron. “On average, we harvest about 2% of our timberlands a year, which means the remaining 98% is always at some stage of growth. Our forest stocks are steady, and we’re still able to support a thriving wood and building products industry.”

Our forests are indeed thriving. Since 1920, U.S. forestlands have increased 6.2%, to 766 million acres, at the same time our population has ALSO increased, dramatically – 212% to 311 million people. 

That forest health is thanks to conservation efforts that not only protect land, but also managed forests protect air and water quality, the water table, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, rural economies and small businesses, and indigenous cultures. 
These programs also significantly reduce the possibility of catastrophic wildfires. 

The story is similar north of the border. Canada’s forest lands have remained steady over the same period, despite a population increase of 350%. 

The case for hardwoods 
The species Caron uses for their solid wood components — maple, oak, walnut, birch — all come from forests that have been managed for generations. To meet the demand for these high-value species companies need access to tall, healthy trees. 

Left unmanaged, faster-growing lower value species on these lands steal the sunlight the maples and oaks need to grow large enough to be useful for the furniture industry. 

Foresters for the hardwoods supplier NWH said recently that they’ve never had to replant trees in the northern hardwood forests they’ve been managing for decades. 

That’s because about five saplings are growing for every tree harvested. All they need is access to sunlight to naturally grow and mature. 

Education is the best marketing
Caron’s journey isn’t over, but after asking for help from the forestry industry and his suppliers, he is now armed with the facts and has the wind at his back. 

“There are so many positives. Wood requires less energy to process compared to other materials, and also happens to be one of the most beautiful materials we have,” Caron said. “Composite wood lets us use the waste our industry once burned or buried, so we can now use over 99% of the fiber from every tree harvested. And all wood-based materials store naturally captured carbon, more than is released by harvesting the trees and making cabinet doors, which helps keep more CO2 out of the atmosphere.”

And as composite wood and hardwoods suppliers both say, if forests are not making money they won’t be managed, and the supply of quality wood will suffer.

The lesson here is that Caron Industries doesn’t have to change anything they’re doing to be able to tell this really incredible sustainability story. 

The real innovation here has been bringing their suppliers to the table to help them share this story with their customers. 
“We believe that taking the lead here will give us a competitive advantage,” Caron said. 

“But we also think it’s important that our industry has a responsibility to educate the public about the good we’re doing.”