In days gone by, thoughts of lumber production brought to mind grizzled loggers cutting down forests and leaving large patches of earth empty and desolate. In reality, wood production is extraordinarily environmentally sustainable. By using engineered wood in your building project, you’re helping to reduce the energy needed to build and improve energy efficiency in your finished structure. Here are a few crucial reasons why you should use wood:
Wood production is rooted in sustainability. Contemporary wood production is predicated on sustainable ecology principles, which emphasizes increasing forest areas and a committed opposition to deforestation. In fact, the US reported a yearly increase of forests between 1990 and 2005. A robust wood market has led to more forests being planted, not fewer.
Wood building materials need less energy to be produced. When you include growth, harvest, transport, and construction, wood requires less fossil fuel to manufacture, ship, and install. Likewise, the production of other materials, such as concrete and steel, emit more air and water pollutants than wood.
Wood’s life cycle enriches the environment. Forests absorb carbon from the atmosphere, helping to mitigate the greenhouse effect. Additionally, the growing forests produce oxygen; a young forest produces 1.07 tons of oxygen and absorbs 1.47 tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of wood produced.
Wood improves energy efficiency. An excellent insulator, wood’s internal structure slows the conductivity of heat. In fact, studies have shown that wood’s natural insulating characteristics lead to better thermal performance than steel. Moreover, wood’s inherent flexibility gives architects and designers a more leeway to create different possibilities for insulation, making buildings more energy efficient and less expensive to operate.
Engineered wood uses wood’s inherent insulation, grace, and sustainability and makes it even more efficient and productive. Engineered wood’s technological advances are more resistant to water damage, even more insulated, and far more stable. And, engineered wood is a sound environmental choice. The lifecycle of wood production grows our forests and enriches our environment. While wood has always been a sound choice for building, advances in wood production have made it the best environmentally sustainable building material of the 21st century.
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