This Feature appeared in REVOLVE #27Can we dream of Green Cities: towns and municipalities where wood is the main material used for construction? We believe we can. Wood has attracted enormous attention in recent years, not least because of rising ecological awareness. Urban populations have grown and will continue to grow, so we need to look for solutions with the smallest possible ecological footprint. Using wood as a building material is definitely one of those solutions. Labelled wood guarantees that the wood originated from forests managed sustainably.
Wood: an Ecological Product
Wood is an exceptionally environment-friendly material according to the Life Cycle Analysis. This is a technique for assessing the environmental and nature impacts associated with all stages of a material’s life. At every stage wood gets very high scores. During its production, extraction, destruction, processing, usage and recycling wood has a great deal of respect for Earth. When trees are harvested for industrial use – in the construction sector, for example – the CO2 stored during the growth of trees can remain stored for a long time in the wood used as a product.