Sunday, 01 June 2003
Market Interest in Green Building Promotes Forest Conservation
When you think of “green building," most people tend to think of things such as energy efficient lighting, increased water efficiency, integrated recycling centers, and more “pleasant" work atmospheres for employees.
What is often overlooked, and has become a very important issue, is the wood used in building and construction processes, and how this directly translates into forest conservation.
Materials selection, not just construction site selection, is one of the most important factors in making a project “green." According to an article that appeared in Environmental Building News, Vol. 10, No. 5 (May 2001) titled “Buildings and the Environment: The Numbers":
“through careful design and material selection, the impacts that buildings have on the environment can be significantly reduced… Beyond size and material efficiency, we should specify products that carry minimum environmental burdens, including FSC-certified wood products."
Thanks to the LEED™ program of the US Green Building Council, there has been a definite surge in the specification of FSC-certified wood for use in commercial construction projects.
Clay Seale of Rulon Company based in Brunswick, GA, said that, due to green building initiatives, “in the past 6 months we have seen a marked increase in architects specifying FSC certified materials. In our company, that directly translates into more business. We’re the only Chain-of-Custody certificate holder in our small niche, so that allows us to bid on a lot of projects from start to finish." Rulon Company manufactures custom architectural wood ceilings and wall systems.
Mark Slezak of Columbia Forest Products, a Chain-of-Custody certified company and an FSC Member, says that the green building market is “showing a steady increase." As one example, they have supplied some FSC-certified materials for projects at Middlebury College in Vermont. According to Slezak, “the market interest is growing, we just need to keep feeding it."
EcoTimber, of San Rafael, CA, an area known as a “hotbed" for green building, has seen definite positive impacts as a result of having an FSC certification. Cael Kendall, EcoTimber CEO, stated that, “the FSC certification system has given EcoTimber the ability to offer credible, meaningful third-party verification of the sustainability of our products. Without it, our efforts in marketing our woods to the green building community would be lost in the sea of bogus claims and “greenwashing" that are now rampant in the forest products industry."
This trend is not just in commercial construction—residential construction is also beginning to go “green" as well, and opening up new markets for FSC suppliers. For example, In March of 2000, the homebuilding corporation KB Home, headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, agreed to work with the non-profit environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to eliminate their use of wood that comes from what NRDC considers to be endangered forests. As a first step to make sure it wasn’t using lumber from these regions, the company agreed not to use wood from the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
Building on this commitment, NRDC’s Senior Resource Specialist, Debbie Hammel, worked with KB Home and its major supplier in California, Golden State Lumber, to take this idea even further by supplying one of KB Home’s largest northern California projects with FSC certified wood. NRDC successfully facilitated an arrangement whereby Canyon Oaks, a 124-home subdivision project located in Pleasanton, California, will be built using almost 1 million board feet of FSC framing lumber—the largest volume of FSC wood ever used in a homebuilding project in the United States. Approximately 50 percent of the total wood used in these single-family homes is FSC-certified.
According to Hammel, “KB Home has clearly taken a proactive approach to implementing their endangered forest policy. They recognize the dual importance of protecting forests that are critically endangered from commercial harvest, while taking significant steps to source their wood from well-managed forests that have been certified to the FSC standard. No other national builder can make such a claim."
The Grand Opening for Canyon Oaks is scheduled for June 6. In order to educate prospective home buyers about the wood used in the construction of these homes, they will be able to watch a video tape on FSC certification provided by Certified Wood and Paper Association, read a 1-page informational piece on what “FSC certified wood" means, and Rick Zaslove, President of Golden State Lumber, will be in attendance to answer questions.
The Certified Wood and Paper Association (CWPA), based in Portland, OR, is helping this growing green building initiative by linking FSC-certified landowners and Chain-of-Custody manufacturers with architects and builders who are interested in using wood materials from sustainable sources. As Jon Pampush of CWPA noted, “CWPA is focused on the market that is really creating demand for sustainable forest products, and that’s LEED and other 'green-building’ programs. We help architects specify available FSC, certified recycled, and certified reclaimed products, and then connect them with the companies that supply these products."
For more information on green buildings, visit the following link at the US Green Building Council, which provides many useful links to green building sites:www.usgbc.org/Resources/links.asp.