Tag: sustainability

Game Changer: Engineered Wood Opens Doors in the Construction Market

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

CLT

Is engineered wood ‘the new concrete?’ As demand grows, some industry sources say mass timber is set to open new doors in construction for the lumber industry, offering lucrative opportunities at the intersection of timber and tech. Advances in the processes used to make cross-laminated timber and other engineered wood products have set up a boom for tall wooden buildings with similar if not better structural integrity than those made with steel and concrete, making the construction industry as a whole more environmentally friendly.

Made from industrially dried quick-growing wood – including pine – CLT is up to four times lighter than reinforced concrete. A building made with CLT instead of traditional concrete uses up to 70 percent less material and can cut construction times by a third, sending project profitability through the roof. Developers are definitely taking note.

In a recent issue of the property insurer GenRe’s ‘Property Matters’ publication, Property/Casualty Senior Consulting Underwriter Leo Ronken examines “what’s so good about wood,” going down a long list of the attributes that have made engineered wood increasingly popular with architects, legislators and construction pros.

“In the global trend toward the construction of buildings that meet ecological needs, wood has some clear advantages over traditional construction materials such as steel and concrete. With advances in engineered wood materials and components come possibilities to construct increasingly larger buildings – a trend being witnessed around the world.”

Real estate services firm JLL has also noted the trend and what it could mean moving forward, calling it a ‘game changer.’

“The emergence of successful mass timber projects across all sectors is a trend which looks set to continue and develop as the industry demands more innovation. As Lucas Epp, Head of Engineering at StructureCraft in North America, says mass timber projects require fewer construction workers on site, less waste and higher quality of work. ‘Mass timber office buildings are also now competing with steel and concrete on cost,’ he adds.”

The forest products industry has long depended on single family homes, but mass timber opens the possibility of entrance into new markets where wooden framing was previously seen as inappropriate. Buildings made with mass timber are able to meet strict building codes, including those measuring fire resistance.

Another benefit of increased demand for CLT is the fact that it can be made with smaller, second-growth timber, reducing the need for so many big, solid logs from older trees and fueling greater efficiency at mills.

Image via Woodworks.org

Waste Not: Scientists Turn Pine Needles into a Renewable Plastic

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

pine needles 2

Recently, we learned that the fresh scent of Eastern White Pine trees growing in forests can actually help combat climate change by emitting particles into the air that promote cloud formation. As if that wasn’t cool enough, a new scientific innovation is proving the power of pine in a whole new way: by transforming waste pine needles left over from timber processing into a renewable plastic.

Needles account for 20% to 30% of a pine tree’s mass, and a lot of them tend to accumulate at saw mills. Sometimes they’re burned or composted, and sometimes they’re up cycled into biomass for fuel or mulch for gardens. But now they might just represent a much cleaner, greener future for plastics, replacing crude oil.

Chemists led by Matthew Davidson at the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies in England found that pinene, the naturally derived organic compound that gives pine trees their smell, can be converted into a polymer using a four-step process. This is a huge breakthrough not only for plastics in general but for the effort to create plastic products from renewable resources, as previous attempts required adding some non-renewable components to give the final plastic flexibility.

This new pine needle plastic, on the other hand, could come entirely from renewable sources, eliminating the need to use fossil fuels and finding a new purpose for waste at the same time.

“We’re not talking about recycling old Christmas trees into plastics, but rather using a waste product from the industry that would otherwise be thrown away and turning it into something useful,” says PhD student Helena Quilter, who worked on the project.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

 

Sophisticated Forestry Techniques Increase Carbon Storage Capacity – And Value – of Forests

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

eastern white pine maine

A series of sophisticated modern forestry techniques effectively mimic the state of old-growth forest habitats to boost their carbon absorption rates, helping to mitigate climate change and increasing their monetary value. That doesn’t mean these conventional timberlands aren’t still growing and harvesting trees for sale as logs – they’re just growing faster. The techniques harvest timber in a way that mimics natural disturbances of old forests, like wind storms, releasing the crowns of large older trees by cutting less vigorous trees around them.

That gives those older trees lots of sunlight so they grow new wood and leaves faster than usual, and in turn, store more carbon dioxide so it isn’t released into the atmosphere. The ‘structural complexity enhancement’ technique, or SCE, shows dramatically higher levels of carbon storage than conventional ‘single-tree’ and ‘group’ harvest selection techniques – and they increase biodiversity, too.

This approach keeps more carbon on-site, even when accounting for the life cycle of carbon in wood products. The carbon storage factor could prove to be profitable for landowners who not only manage forests to sell logs, but could also earn money in the ‘carbon markets’ that have been sprouting up around the United States and the world.

The study, carried out over two decades on northern hardwood and mixed hardwood-conifer forest plots on the side of Mount Mansfield in northern Vermont, was published in the journal Ecosphere on April 6th, 2017.

“We were very surprised that the growth rate of trees in the structural complexity areas exceeded the areas with conventional treatments,” says University of Vermont forest ecologist Bill Keeton, who co-led the study. “This overturns previous dogma that more heavily thinned areas would have faster growth that would sequester carbon more rapidly than old trees.”

4 Ways Sustainable Forestry Supports The Future of Wood Construction

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

SFI

The international Mass Timber Conference brought global experts in the mass timber industry together in Portland, Oregon this week to discuss how we can increase the use of wood in mid-rise and tall buildings around the world. The conference explored the entire supply chain for innovative wood technologies like cross-laminated timber and laminated veneer lumber. One of the main speakers, Jason Metric of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), spoke about four ways responsible forestry supports wood construction.

The speech focused on how forest certification can open up global markets in green building, a highly relevant topic for anyone working in the forestry industry today. For anyone who couldn’t be present at the event, SFI has outlined the four ways in a post on Treehugger.com.

The 4 ways in-depth:

1. Ensure the wood products in your construction project – whether small buildings or tall buildings – come from certified, responsible, and legal sources.

Watch architect Michael Green talk about the future of wooden skyscrapers and the importance of sustainable building materials here:

2. In North America, more than 285 million acres/115 million hectares of forests are certified to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Forest Management Standard and millions more are positively impacted by SFI Fiber Sourcing Standard.

There’s a simple way you can ensure that our forests remain healthy. Look for the SFI® label on any wood, paper and packaging product you purchase. It’s your assurance that what you buy comes from responsibly managed and legal forests.

3. SFI is recognized by LEED and other top green building rating systems.

On April 5, 2016, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) issued a LEED alternative compliance path (ACP) that recognizes wood and paper from the SFI Program as part of an integrated approach to encouraging environmentally responsible forest management and eliminating illegal wood from the building material’s supply chain.

4. Wood is celebrated by leading architects for its beauty, versatility, and renewability.

The 2017 SFI Certified Wood Award, part of the North American Wood Design and Building Awards program, was presented to Hacker, Portland-based architects. The Black Butte Ranch used Sierra Pacific windows and other wood certified to the SFI Standard.

The Fresh Scent of Eastern White Pine Trees Can Help Cool the Climate

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

pine needles

You may already know that the Eastern White Pine tree plays a crucial role in helping to combat climate change by sequestering carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, in its trunk. But would you ever have guessed that the very same compounds in the tree that we associate with its fresh green scent can help cool the climate, too? Researchers have made an interesting discovery that puts the invigorating scent of pine in a whole new light.

A study conducted by the University of Washington found that the gas released by coniferous trees, including Pinus strobus, creates particles that promote cloud formation and reflect sunlight, effectively cooling the local region. The particles released by pine trees, which range in size between 1 and 100 nanometers, can be large enough to seed clouds, creating shade and encouraging rainfall.

That’s a huge benefit in an age when impending climate change effects are expected to result in extended periods of drought. The levels of these scented compounds in the air is expected to increase as global temperatures go up, researchers say.

“It’s thought that as the Earth warms there will be more of these vapors emitted, and some fraction of them will be converted to particles which can potentially shade the Earth’s surface,” says Joel Thornton, one of the study authors. “How effective that is at temperature regulation is still very much an open question.”

Image via Wikimedia Commons

What Makes a Home Sustainable? 4 Pillars of Green Home Construction

Posted on by Jeff Easterling

green home

The word ‘green’ has been thrown around so much over the last decade, it’s lost a lot of its meaning. How do you define a ‘green home,’ for instance? Individual definitions range from calling a conventional home fitted with a few solar panels and low-flow toilets ‘eco-friendly’ to reserving the term for structures that have been LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) according to a strict set of criteria by the U.S. Green Building Council. When you’re looking to make your home more environmentally friendly, which features matter most? Here’s a quick overview of some of the most basic elements of a ‘green home.’

Local, Non-Toxic, Recycled and Renewable Materials

Many conventional building materials off-gas toxic substances into home interiors, or consume a lot of energy or contribute to pollution during manufacturing. For example, the cement industry is one of the primary producers of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. Since it’s natural, renewable, recyclable and consumes very little energy during processing, wood can be a much greener choice – but only if it’s grown, harvested and distributed sustainably. For example, you can’t call a home made of a wood sourced from clear-cut Amazonian forests ‘green.’ Choose sustainably managed wood, like Eastern White Pine, from regional sources when possible.

Compact Size

Smaller homes aren’t just more affordable to build and maintain – they also consume fewer resources over time. When you build a compact home that’s just large enough to suit your needs, you use fewer materials in the first place to build it, enabling you to budget for higher quality. It’ll also cost you less to heat, cool and provide electricity to the home in the long run, not to mention saving your own energy keeping it clean and organized.

Reducing Energy Consumption

While renewable energy is a great choice to replace or supplement power from the grid when possible, there are all sorts of ways you can reduce your energy consumption at home. LED lighting may cost a little more initially, but the bulbs last years longer than incandescent or even compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs, and they use a mere fraction of the energy. Energy-efficient appliances can make a big dent in your consumption, too. Have your heating and cooling system serviced regularly, and employ passive methods of reducing or increasing heat gain depending on the time of year, like using blackout curtains.

Passive solar home design is a great way to build energy efficiency right into your home plans from the start, reducing heating and cooling loads by orienting the roof and windows to provide shade or let in sunlight at various times of the year. Learn more about passive solar at Energy.gov.

Efficiency

Insulating and weatherizing your home will go a long way toward making the interiors comfortable in all weather without letting precious heat or air conditioning escape through the cracks. Choose high-efficiency insulation like radiant barriers, wool, cellulose and structural insulated panels. Seal windows and doors with weatherstripping, caulk or plastic film, and check the exterior for air leaks around vents and pipes. Efficiency applies to water consumption, too – choose water-smart appliances and fixtures.

Image via Wikimedia Commons