Why Wood? Print E-mail

Quality - esthetics - environment - well-being

Trees
Wood is nature's own material. From forests we receive wood, a living material which for centuries has held its rightful place as the preferred building material. Wood is a lasting raw material...we will always have wood.

Preferred by the environment

When you decide on wooden windows and doors from sustainable foresty, you choose a solution which benefits the environment at the same time. The amount of carbon dioxide stored inside wood, is maintained throughout the entire life of the veranda. Meanwhile new trees are reforested to further increase carbon dioxide absorption. All in all a very important contribution towards minimising the green house effect.

Life Cycle Assessment

LCA is a technique which assesses the environmental impacts of a building component throughout its entire life. It is becoming increasingly important to take into account origin, application or conversion into a separate product and consequent use in a building, right through to disposal or re-use / recycling of a material, as more and more specifiers are required in considering environmental impacts of selected products and materials.

Energy use in extraction, production and transport to site

CO2 emmissions graph
Energy used in the extraction and production of a material or product is called 'embodied energy'. Generally speaking, the higher the embodied energy, the higher the CO2 emissions. Compared with the high emissions and embodied energy of alternative materials like aluminium and plastic, wood has low embodied energy and thanks to the carbon sink effect of the forest, negative C02. Even though materials such as steel or aluminium are often recycled, the process requires huge amounts of energy. By comparison, when the wood industry requires energy, it is one of the highest users of biomass power generation, often making a net contribution to national grid networks. The environmental impact of transporting materials to site is also taken into account in the LCA calculation.

The use of wood products encourages expansion of the forestry industry, in turn increasing the carbon sink effect and reducing C02 emission.

Every m3 of wood used instead of other building materials prevents 0.8 tonne of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.

UPVC, aluminium or timber?

Poison plastic symbol
The production and disposal of UPVC products leads to the release of highly poisonous chemicals which threaten the environment and human health. UPVC production involves no less than 6 of the 15 most hazardous chemicals listed by European governments for priority elimination.

20-25 times more energy is used producing an aluminium product than a wooden one and even more when it is recycled.

Wood sourced from properly managed forests is a sustainable resource. Wooden structures require minimal maintenance and have a significantly longer life than UPVC. Life expectancy of a UPVC product is 10-15 years compared to over 50 years from a high-quality wooden product.

Despite common belief, UPVC does degrade, they are not maintenance free and worst of all - they cannot be repaired if needed.

Sources: European Commissions DG Enterprise 2003, Greenpeace, Wood for Good.
 
Design by: WebMaestro  Hosting by:CoppackInternet