Seventeen thousand boards
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Seventeen thousand boards

Since 2018 we have shipped 17,817 loose recycled lumber boards. Not benches. Boards. Each one is a bench that was repaired instead of replaced, and that is what a circular product looks like in an order book.

Wishbone Site Furnishings
·September 9, 2026·1 min read
17,817
loose boards shipped as repair and replacement stock
1,018separate orders for them
11,040benches shipped over the same years

Circularity is usually described in terms of what a product is made from. The more useful measure is what happens when it breaks. A bench built as one sealed object is landfill the day a slat splits. A bench built from stock-profile boards on a frame is a repair order.

The 17,817 boards in our records are that repair order, a thousand times over. They went out in ones and fives and twenties, to parks departments replacing a vandalised slat, to contractors matching a bench installed a decade earlier, to a strata fixing a lounger. The frame stayed in the ground. The bench kept its place.

Why this works

Two design decisions, made a long time ago. The lumber is a stock profile, the same two by four and two by six that go into every product, cut to length. And the same profiles have been in the catalogue continuously, which is the part most manufacturers cannot say. A replacement board for a 2019 bench is the board we are shipping today.

The environmental accounting is simple. One board replaced is one bench not manufactured, not shipped, not installed, and one old bench not hauled away. We do not have a carbon figure for that and we are not going to invent one. The count is enough.

From the archive

On site

Wishbone ft Wheelchair Accessible Rutherford Wide Body Memorial Bench in Smithers BC
Wishbone ft Wheelchair Accessible Rutherford Wide Body Memorial Bench in Smithers BC1 / 6
Wishbone Rutherford Bench on Perma pad in West Kelowna BC
Wishbone Rutherford Bench on Perma pad in West Kelowna BC2 / 6
WishboneRutherfordMemorialBenchinKelownaBC tap658
WishboneRutherfordMemorialBenchinKelownaBC tap6583 / 6
Wishbone Rutherford Bench Green Lumber Textured Black Frame on the Salmon Trail in Lumby BC Front View
Wishbone Rutherford Bench Green Lumber Textured Black Frame on the Salmon Trail in Lumby BC Front View4 / 6
Wishbone Rutherford Wide Body Benches at Alexis Park in Vernon BC
Wishbone Rutherford Wide Body Benches at Alexis Park in Vernon BC5 / 6
Wishbone Rutherford Memorial Bench in Kelowna BC
Wishbone Rutherford Memorial Bench in Kelowna BC6 / 6

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