Building Green With Wood: Turns Out Wood Is A "Green" Building Material After All
(HIT) - It's no secret that the wood industry has "taken it on the chin" over environmental concerns and a growing movement to find "green" building materials in recent years. These environmental concerns and the emergence of alternative building products made from non-renewable resources have joined to lead an assault on wood's place in the home building and remodeling markets throughout the nation.
However, recent trends in Europe, and new studies in life cycle assessment and the environmental impact of various building materials now suggests that wood's reputation as a green building product, and recognition for the wood industry's important contributions to green concepts like renewability and environmental sustainability, are on the rebound.
Life cycle assessments are analysis’ of energy use and environmental impact over the entire lifetime of different building materials—from the manufacture or harvesting of raw materials, to turning them into building products, getting the products to market, tracking their performance when in-place and disposal of the products when their useful life is complete.
There’s a lot of energy "embodied" in a product outside of its application to a given purpose. For example, when wood is compared to metals and plastics on an environmental basis, wood fares quite well because it is both renewable and requires far less energy to turn into a building product. It’s also biodegradable.
According to Alan Campbell, president of the National Wood Window and Door Association: "The popular impression is that the wood industry uses wood resource wastefully and that wood is a non-renewable resource. That simply is not the case. Over 50 years ago a line was crossed when wood growth exceeded wood harvest and the ratio of growth to harvest has been increasing ever since."
"The point is that the industry's efforts at reforestation have paid off and that the wood resource is renewable," Campbell added.
During the past thirty-some years, the wood manufacturing industry has been involved in an extensive product development effort, making wood products greener than ever. According to Jim Glasgow, Technical Services Manager for Jeld-Wen, an Oregon-based manufacturer of wood products made and marketed throughout the nation: "In our efforts to conserve the resource, the wood industry has developed engineered wood products. This means that wood which could not have been used in the past is now fully useable and the new wood products are actually stronger and more dimensionally stable than their ancestors. We're also able to use wood fibers in many of our new products. Everything from oriented strand board (the new generation of plywood) to formed wood doors demonstrates the effort manufacturers have been making."
Wood is, by far, today's most environmentally responsible choice in building materials, and a natural choice for homeowners looking for green building materials. Bob Hunt, president of Western Wood Products Association, notes that, unlike alternative materials, such as steel, plastic, concrete and aluminum, wood comes from a renewable resource. "With our growing forests, wood is the only resource capable of meeting civilization’s increasing demand for industrial materials," he said.
Hunt adds that wood is more energy efficient, in both production and use, than other materials. Wood is durable, easy to work with and biodegradable, with far fewer environmental burdens than other materials. "By nearly every measure, wood is the responsible choice for the environment," he said.
States Peter Dempsey, marketing manager for the door divisions of Jeld-Wen, "The basic preference in the market is for wood products. As an example, a significant percentage of all wood door sales is to the multi-billion dollar home remodeling industry. To us, it means that, given a chance to choose, homeowners prefer wood."
The European homebuilding industry, which led the move away from wood to vinyl products, is now returning to wood as a green building material, precisely because studies show that wood has a lower environmental impact than its alternatives.
Given the renewability of the wood resource, the lower life-cycle impact of the product, and the market's natural preference for wood, industry representatives are pleased at wood's recognition as a green building material and are seeing a brighter future for the wood industry and its traditions.
Courtesy: Home Improvement News and Information Center
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