Benefits of Trees
Food, Medicine, Shelter and Warmth

3. They provide us with important products including food, medicine, shelter and warmth.

Every day we use (or perhaps eat) something that has come from a tree. From the paper we write on and the pencil we write with, the desk we use and the chair we sit on, to even the building we are in -- they all came from trees. The uses of wood are virtually endless.

Many of the wood products we use require trees to be felled (cut down) and turned into logs of timber or lumber for manufacturing. Trees are also cut down so their wood can be used as fuel to cook food and heat homes. Another form of energy provided by trees is coal. Coal is formed from ancient forests squashed under layers of rock where heat and pressure turned the ancient forests into coal.

We don't always have to cut down a tree to be able to use something from it. Rubber is made from natural latex, a type of sap that comes from rubber-producing trees found mainly in Brazil, India, China and Southeast Asia. The sap of a rubber tree is collected by making cuts in the bark (tapping) and collecting the sticky juice that flows out. The juice is then made into rubber that is found in countless products we use every day. Check your shoes, you may be wearing rubber on your soles, or even riding rubber when you're out on your bike.

Cork is the bark of the evergreen cork oak found in the Mediterranean region. Cork has the ability to contract when squeezed (for instance into the neck of a bottle) and then expand. When it expands in the neck of a bottle it keeps the cork firmly in place and stops any liquid in the bottle from leaking. The evergreen cork oak is one of the few trees that does not die when its bark is removed.

What about the things we eat? How many different fruits or nuts can you name that come from trees? Or what about the maple syrup we like to slather on our pancakes? Sap is tapped from the sugar maple to make maple syrup. And did you know that cinnamon comes from the bark of a tree that grows in India?

There are many plants that have life-saving properties. About $40 billion are spent annually on prescription and non-prescription drugs that contain active ingredients that come from rain forests. Illnesses such as malaria, hypertension, heart disease and cancer are all treated with medicines made in part from rain forest plants. Of the 3,000 species of plants that the National Cancer Institute has identified as having anti-cancer properties, 70 percent are from the tropics, including rosy periwinkle from Madagascar, which is used to treat leukemia in children.