How Building With Wood Can Decrease Our Environmental Footprint

Forming buildings with traditional materials can heavily impact our environment by releasing greenhouse gasses. Buyers are sometimes put off from investing in constructions that harm the environment in this way.

This means that the construction industry has started to search for innovative ways to solve this looming issue for the foreseeable future. Read on to uncover how wood can be a much better alternative to traditional materials – after all, even a singular build can make a colossal difference to our planet.

Materials Used in the Past

Before architects and builders had discovered the benefits of using wood as a building material, projects mainly depended on concrete and steel. These materials have been used endlessly to create houses, stadiums, and even skyscrapers – yet these buildings come at a serious environmental cost.

Concrete, as one of the most used substances on the planet, has become responsible for a chunk of carbon dioxide emissions and is even linked to the serious depletion of sand. With such alarming issues surrounding these traditional materials, this is where selecting an eco-friendly building material comes in: wood.

As a non-toxic product, timber doesn’t release any harsh chemicals into the building project, making it safe to touch and meaning that it will age naturally and not break down into any environmentally damaging materials.

Using Wood as a Building Material

Considering all the principal construction materials, timber is actually the most environmentally friendly of the lot, having the lowest carbon dioxide emissions and the lowest energy consumption.

As a naturally renewable resource, wood is grown all over the globe – as long as more trees are planted, wood will continue to be readily available. Further still, it doesn’t take much energy to turn wood into timber for building use, meaning fewer fossil fuels have to be used up to create this end product.

As a non-toxic product, timber doesn’t release any harsh chemicals into the building project, making it safe to touch and meaning that it will age naturally and not break down into any environmentally damaging materials.

Carbon Storers

Timber is constructed from carbon. During photosynthesis, as trees grow, the trees absorb the harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere surrounding them.

Since this carbon would otherwise be in our atmosphere, taking it out stops it from contributing to the greenhouse effect. So, not only does this eco-friendly material take in more carbon dioxide from the air than it adds to it through the manufacturing process, but it can also replace carbon-intensive materials like concrete to contribute to the lowering of carbon dioxide emissions even more.

Timber’s Lifecycle

When using wood as a building material, its whole lifecycle is taken into consideration. Since timber is biodegradable, this means that it can be naturally broken down by microorganisms at the end of its life. This ensures that timber’s lifecycle is completely green – from its initial construction to its use as a building material to its end of life.

Generating Energy

When it is used as a construction material, timber stops energy from escaping into buildings. This easily reduces both energy expenditure and harmful emissions. This material is also widely known to be simple to work with during the building process, meaning less energy is needed.

Furthermore, the usage of timber encourages the growth of forestry. In turn, this will generate more trees, which will decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

How is Wood Actually Used in Construction Projects?

As a versatile and durable material, timber is used for its attractive natural aesthetic as well as its practical quality. Architects across the world have started to replace other building materials with this one to reduce their environmental impact and maximize material usage.

This material can be used throughout buildings in frames, beams, and floors, amongst other applications, providing thermal, strength, and acoustic performance.

Exciting and innovative developments in modern technology have allowed bigger and bigger buildings to be built using timber. Furthermore, timber buildings usually weigh much less than concrete buildings, meaning that the gravitational load is massively reduced. This allows projects to go ahead with minimal foundations with relatively few steel sections.

How Can Businesses Approach the Use of Wood?

There’s a lot that businesses and marketers can take away from the approach of using wood as a building material.

As a material that can heavily decrease our environmental footprint, homebuyers are more attracted to buying a timber-constructed house than ever before. By showing your company to be a prime figure in environmental awareness, customers can feel good about their eco-friendly investment.