Greg Danbrooke’s day job is teaching photography at Humber Polytechnic, Seneca Polytechnic, and Mohawk College.
But after hours, he’s been planning out a proposal for a brand-new elective course tentatively named Carbon Resources Utilization (CRU).
The course would teach students about the carbon cycle and how trees remove carbon from the atmosphere. Then it covers how controlled harvesting for wood products can keep carbon out of the atmosphere, serving as a natural method of carbon capture.
Danbrooke said the idea started more than a decade ago when he needed wood pulp for his chickens, and decided to make it himself.
He said after he planed shavings from wood found in his yard, he was left with lumber planks.
"What I don't have is woodworking skills to actually turn them into anything," Danbrooke said.
He said he thought of Humber's woodworking program and the Humber Arboretum, and how something could be done with leftover "Humber lumber," such as from fallen trees.
Danbrooke said he'd thought somebody should put it together, but that it wasn’t until last year that he realized he would have to be the one to do it.
“I was like ‘oh crap, I think that somebody is me,’” he said.
Danbrooke's proposal form said the course would give students "tours through the Humber Arboretum and hands-on woodworking demonstrations ... and an opportunity to participate in the creation of usable lumber and wood-storing items."
Spencer Wood, Humber’s facilities management director, said he’s very interested in the idea of reusing wood from campus after meeting with Danbrooke.
Wood said Humber “should be using these opportunities for the students to learn.”
“We do everything we can to keep the trees alive for as long as they can, we select native species in the first place, and we try to prepare the soil in a way that they are going to thrive,” he said.
Wood said that currently, when a tree falls or begins to die on Humber property, a contractor comes to take it away. He said the smaller trees are mulched.
“But if it’s a bigger one, we’re left wondering ‘what do we do with all the wood?’” Wood said.
“I’m very interested in this ‘full circle’ concept of the carbon gets taken out of the atmosphere by the tree and then either we use the products on campus for later, or we use the wood,” he said.
Michael Naumoff, an outdoor education coordinator at the Humber Arboretum, said that typically, when a tree falls naturally in the Arboretum forests, “we don’t touch them.”
“If you take an entire tree that falls, then the forest no longer gets the nutrients from that tree,” Naumoff said.
He said that invasive trees could be targeted, but that the city has already removed many invasive tree species from its property.
Naumoff said going outdoors can be more engaging for students than in-class learning.
He said many courses and programs at Humber, such as fashion or nursing, visit the Arboretum to build on in-class learning.
Drew Aaslepp said he thinks the students in his wood shop would really engage by processing their own wood.
Aaslepp works as program coordinator for both Humber’s Industrial Woodworking and Furniture and Cabinetmaking Techniques programs.
“Imagine being a student in our program, in your first semester, being able to slab material, put it into a kiln, and then in your third semester use that material to build a project from,” he said.
Aaslepp said his program has wanted its own sawmill and kiln for a long time, but that the timing wasn't right.
Since meeting with Danbrooke, Aaslepp said it still isn't, at least in the short term.
“I think, as a woodworker ... and for us, we really try to build that passion for the art of woodworking ... seeing a material come in and processing it from start to finish is just something that’s kind of holistic about the process. I really like the idea of it,” he said.
“And I mean ultimately … the number one goal is to keep them engaged as much as possible,” Aaslepp said.
Danbrooke said the feedback was encouraging, but that progress felt “glacially slow.”
He said he cares about these local changes because they can grow over time.
Danbrooke said that many small efforts to help the environment can come together to make a big difference.
“There is no one fix for climate,” he said.
