DCI

You get the best product at competitive prices because we manage the entire production process from standing timber and rough lumber to milling, manufacturing, and installation. Our supply chain control gives you unparalleled flexibility, service, and the most sustainable FSC-certified residence hall furniture on the market. When you work with DCI, you support local economies in rural Vermont, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Southern California.

In 2020, the USDA dubbed DCI, Inc. a “Sustainability Champion” based on our decades-long commitment to green manufacturing and awarded the company with a $250k grant to support a new renewable energy system. This added to a $706k grant from the USFS and $500k from the NH Renewable Energy Fund - all in support of upgrading our existing renewable energy system.

In the same year, we won a $75,000 grant from the State of Vermont’s Working Lands Enterprise Initiative to expand our FSC sawmill. The award supports Vermont companies that are contributing to the state’s forest products industry and positively impacting the supply chain.

At DCI, we believe in a regenerative circular economy based on reusing, recycling, repurposing, and upcycling resources while minimizing the impact of our products on the natural world. We apply these values at every stage of our vertically integrated manufacturing process.

We work with state-certified foresters to choose the trees for our lumber. Our small patch cuts are designed to create habitat for endangered and threatened species while contributing to overall forest health.

We maintain a zero wood-waste policy in all manufacturing processes through the reuse of all wood by-products. Our FSC-certified sawmill uses high-efficiency saws to maximize yields from every log. We use bark for landscaping materials. We sell sawdust to local farms for animal bedding and use it as fuel to heat our factory. Rough woodcuts get re-used in pallets of other building materials. And we use leftover hardwood to build our internal furniture components rather than buying Poplar or other species.

Ahead of EPA standards, our water-based stains and UV-cured roll-applied finishing process emit Zero VOCs (chemicals emitted as gasses from certain solids or liquids that have adverse health effects).

Through ourEnd Of Life Furniture Program, during on-campus installations over the last decade, we have repurposed, recycled, resold, reused, and donated more than 300 40ft containers of reclaimed campus furniture. That’s a huge amount of furniture that was bound for the landfill that will go on to live another life. We have also partnered with the nonprofitChicago Furniture Bank, which provides used furniture to Chicagoans that face poverty by allowing clients to handpick an entire home’s worth of furnishings for free.

To reduce electrical demand, our factories use motion sensor lighting. All waste byproducts of our manufacturing processes are used to make steam to heat our factory. When our wood boiler is in use, the factory does not consume any gas or oil (even during cold New Hampshire winters). By using a wood boiler to run our energy-intensive wood kilns and heat our factory and offices, we are saving on average 68 gallons of oil an hour or over 200,000 gallons of oil per year. And the cost savings from ourrenewable energy system is estimated at $390,000 annually.