What is Responsible Wood Burning?
Responsible wood burning is about minimizing the emissions from a wood fire. It entails practicing responsible wood burning habits (such as building small hot fires, using seasoned wood or manufactured firelogs) and using low emission wood burning hearth products (such as wood burning stoves and fireplace inserts certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and new state-of-the-art clean burning fireplaces) to help reduce wood smoke by more than 85 percent. Essentially, burning wood responsibly is about doing the right thing for you, your family, and your neighbors while protecting your ability to burn wood well into the future.

Wood Heat is in Demand
With recurring concerns about the high cost of home heat, many people throughout North America are once again heating their homes with firewood. As a renewable, biomass fuel, firewood is abundant and inexpensive. Burning wood for heat also helps people take control of high home heating bills and can even keep a house warm when the power goes out.

The Need to Burn Responsibly
Despite available technologies, many wood fires are still built in either traditional fireplaces or older wood stoves and fireplace inserts manufactured, sold and installed before 1988. Because of the inefficiency and the lack of smoke control technology in these older hearth products, burning firewood in these wood burners can produce significantly more smoke than is necessary.

Hearth Industry Protecting Clean Air
For more than a decade, hearth products manufacturers have been developing and manufacturing wood burning hearth products that emit, in many cases, less than 6 grams of emissions per hour (EPA-certified products need to emit no more than 7.5 grams per hour) compared to the 42 grams of particulates per hour from wood burners manufactured in the 70s and 80s. In addition to these appliances, there are now companies that produce manufactured wood fuels, such as manufactured firelogs and wood pellets, which help reduce wood smoke. To help spread the word about the availability of these products, the hearth industry – including specialty retailers – is actively involved in public education efforts that encourage people within North America to change out old hearth products for low emission wood burning hearth products. Specialty retailers are also actively involved in teaching people how to practice responsible wood burning habits.

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