We’ve Been Carbon Negative Since 2010. Nobody Copied That.

I’ve been at High Tech Health for over a decade now. In that time, I’ve watched competitors copy just about everything we do. Our low EMF approach. Our product claims. Our talking points. Sometimes word for word.

Here’s the thing though. They only copy what’s easy to copy.

We pioneered truly low EMF infrared saunas. Not just low magnetic fields, but low electric fields too. Most of the industry eventually followed us on the magnetic side, sort of. Their numbers still don’t touch ours. But electric field reduction? That’s expensive. It’s difficult. It requires engineering that most companies aren’t willing to invest in. So they just don’t do it and hope you don’t know the difference.

Our heaters? Exclusive to High Tech Health. You won’t find them in anyone else’s sauna because they can’t be bought off a shelf. They’re ours. And in thirty years of manufacturing, thirty years, we have never had a single heater failure. Not one. That’s not a marketing claim. That’s a track record.

Our wood? Solid poplar, the most hypoallergenic wood you can build a sauna with. It costs more to source. It’s harder to get. But for people with chemical sensitivities, it’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity. Nobody else offers it because it’s easier and cheaper to just use cedar like everyone else.

So yeah, we’re used to being the company that does things the hard way because it’s the right way. But there’s one thing we’ve been doing since 2010 that not a single competitor has touched.

We’ve been carbon negative for sixteen years.

Not carbon neutral. Not “exploring sustainable options.” Carbon negative. As in, we remove more carbon than we produce. Every sauna we sell, we plant a tree. That’s been the standard here since before “sustainability” became a brand strategy for companies that don’t actually do anything sustainable.

And honestly? I’d love to be copied on this one. We’re practically begging the industry to follow our lead. So far? Crickets.

I came to this company because of the science. The independently verified EMF readings. The third party calorimetry data. The stuff you can actually check. But what made me stay, what made me genuinely proud to work here, is that the same obsessive attention to doing things right extends beyond product performance and into how the company operates.

This isn’t a “we bought some offsets and slapped a green leaf on the website” situation. The commitment runs through the details of how every infrared sauna gets built and shipped.

Here’s what I mean.

Our engineering team has eliminated more than 62% of PVC from all wiring in our saunas. That’s not a flashy marketing stat. That’s hundreds of hours of sourcing, testing, and redesigning wiring harnesses to reduce a material that off-gasses volatile organic compounds when heated. In a product that heats up. You’d think every sauna company would prioritize that. You’d be wrong.

We hold RoHS certification, the European standard for restricting hazardous substances in electronics. It’s not required for sauna manufacturers in the U.S. We do it anyway.

Our packaging uses zero styrofoam. Almost entirely cardboard. Again, not sexy. Not something that ends up on an Instagram story. But styrofoam is functionally permanent in a landfill, and we ship a lot of saunas. That adds up.

And then there are the heaters themselves. We already know from independent calorimetry testing that our heaters are 34% more effective than the competition. What people don’t always connect is that more efficient heaters mean less energy consumed per session. Less energy per session, multiplied by thousands of saunas running multiple times a week, year after year. That’s a real reduction.

The Wood Nobody Talks About

Let’s talk about what your sauna is actually made of.

The vast majority of infrared saunas on the market are built with western red cedar. It’s the industry default. It smells nice. It looks good in photos. And nobody asks the next question.

They should.

Western red cedar takes 200 to 350 years to fully mature. Even managed timber plantations require 25 to 40 years before harvest. And there’s a bigger issue: much of the world’s western red cedar comes from old growth and second growth forests in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. These are ecosystems under increasing pressure that take centuries to regenerate. When you buy a cedar sauna, you’re participating in that supply chain whether the company mentions it or not.

Then there’s basswood, which some budget sauna companies use. Spruce shows up occasionally too. Hemlock is another option and it’s what we offer as an alternative wood choice, sourced from Canada. Canadian western hemlock takes roughly 80 years to grow, which is still significantly faster than cedar.

But our primary wood is poplar (Aspen). Specifically, solid poplar from Eastern Europe.

Poplar reaches harvestable maturity in roughly 8 to 15 years. Compare that to cedar’s multi-decade timeline or hemlock’s 80 years. That’s a fraction of the grow time. It’s a fast rotation crop tree, meaning it can be replanted and reharvested on a cycle that the forest can actually sustain without touching old growth stands. It’s not even close from a renewability standpoint.

And here’s where the environmental choice and the health choice converge, which is the kind of thing that gets me going.

Poplar is the most hypoallergenic wood you can put in a sauna. It doesn’t contain the aromatic compounds that cedar does. That might sound like a minor detail until you remember that you’re sitting inside this thing at 130 to 150 degrees. Whatever is in your wood is coming out of your wood. Cedar releases volatile organic compounds when heated. That’s literally what you’re smelling. Poplar doesn’t.

We also apply zero chemical treatments or stains to any of our wood. None. What you’re sitting in is exactly what it looks like: solid, untreated, hypoallergenic poplar. In a heated enclosed environment, that matters more than most people realize.

For people with chemical sensitivities, and we hear from a lot of them, this isn’t a nice to have. It’s the reason they can use an infrared sauna at all. Cedar isn’t an option for them. Neither is chemically treated anything. Poplar is. And we’re the only company offering it.

I get excited about data and proof. That’s my thing. But I’ll admit, this topic hits a little different for me.

It’s easy to work for a company that makes a great product. It’s something else to work for one that quietly spends more money on construction, money they could pocket, because the alternative involves materials they don’t want in landfills or chemicals they don’t want in your air. Nobody required us to pull PVC out of our wiring. Nobody forced us to ditch styrofoam packaging. Nobody told us to use a more expensive, less flashy wood because it’s better for both the planet and the person sitting in it. These choices cost more. The company makes them anyway.

And these saunas last. We’ve got units out there that have been running for over twenty years. That’s two decades of not ending up in a landfill. I won’t belabor the point, but longevity is its own form of sustainability.

That says something about values that a mission statement on a website never could.

So yes, we’re running an Earth Day sale. And if you’ve been thinking about an infrared sauna for your home, this is a good time. But I’m not writing this to sell you something.

I’m writing this because most people don’t know any of this about High Tech Health. Fifteen years of carbon negative operations. A tree planted for every sauna sold. Sixty two percent less PVC. RoHS certified. No styrofoam. The most energy efficient heaters on the market. A primary wood that regrows in a fraction of the time as cedar, puts zero pressure on old growth forests, and doesn’t off-gas into your lungs.

These aren’t things we shout about, apparently. Maybe we should.

And to every other sauna company out there, and there are a lot of you now. New brands seem to pop up every month with a website, a few stock photos, and a promise. Some of them will be gone in a year or two, leaving their customers with no warranty support, no replacement parts, and no one to call. We’ve seen it happen over and over. Someone buys what looks like a great deal, and eighteen months later the company has vanished. The customer is stuck with a product from a brand that no longer exists.

We’ve been here for thirty years. We’ll be here for thirty more. So to all of you, copy us on this. Please. Go carbon negative. Plant a tree. Invest in your materials. Build something that lasts.

The planet could use it, and we’ll be the first ones to applaud.