Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

Recent studies have shown the environmental benefits of timber residential developments and in future wooden skyscrapers could hold the key to more environmentally-friendly cities, said senior officials of top Japanese architect group Nikken Sekkei. They were addressing a key gathering on the opening day of Cityscape Global real estate expo in Dubai. One of the world’s largest architectural and engineering design firms, Nikken Sekkei employs over 2,770 professional staff in six group companies offering comprehensive design, engineering, management, consulting and R&D services. …Dr Fadi Jabri, Nikken’s Executive Officer…said: “There are far reaching benefits beyond reduced carbon emissions. In Japan for example, where W350 will be built, by engaging the use of wood for high-rise urban buildings and increasing demand for timber, there is an excellent opportunity to revitalise the country’s forestry industry and make it more sustainable.”

Karst notebooks look like those of any other luxury paper brand… But while the $90.6 billion worldwide stationery industry relies largely on wood pulp, the Sydney-based startup creates notebooks that are made largely from stones that are mixed with a small quantity of resin, a type of plastic. …the pages are also waterproof and tear-resistant. They are also fully recyclable, biodegradable, and carbon neutral, manufactured through a process in which stone—otherwise known as calcium carbonate—is ground up. In this state, stone is actually a very malleable and versatile material. It is commonly used in toothpaste, makeup, and pharmaceuticals. …As consumers become increasingly aware of climate change and the destruction of the planet, Karst’s founders believe that they’re eager to find more sustainable alternatives to the products they use every day.

A new report by the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) presents a clear pathway of actions that will help the building and construction sector reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Released as part of the annual World Green Building Week 2019 taking place 23-29 September, the report ‘Bringing embodied carbon upfront’ presents WorldGBC’s new vision for how buildings and infrastructure around the world can reach 40 percent less embodied carbon emissions by 2030, and achieve 100 percent net zero emissions buildings by 2050. …WorldGBC’s vision to fully decarbonise the sector requires both operational and embodied carbon emissions to be eliminated. …Cristina Gamboa, CEO, World Green Building Council says, “Our new report is a solution focused response to the urgent need to significantly reduce upfront emissions in building and construction and demand action across carbon intensive industries and materials.

Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) will replace plastic shrink wrap across its four, six and eight-packs of cans for all its brands sold in the UK. …Over the next 18 months, the plastic packaging will be replaced with cardboard, which is already used for multipacks of 10 or more cans. According to CCEP, more than 30 million packs sold to consumers each year will no longer be wrapped in plastic. Instead, the multipacks will be packaged in 100% recyclable cardboard from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) certified sources. …While the shrink wrap currently used is recyclable, it is estimated that only 10% of UK local authorities collect the material. In comparison, 98% of cardboard is collected as part of household recycling. …The company was named as the world’s largest corporate plastic polluter last year, in a report from Greenpeace.

Fast-growing and environmentally-friendly, bamboo may soon be used in Australian construction, as academics explore the properties of the giant grass.
A lack of research and Australian building standards have held back the sustainable material from being used Down Under despite already being widely utilised overseas, particularly in developing countries, experts say. University of Queensland PhD candidate Mateo Gutierrez was looking into the fire-resistance properties of bamboo, to help determine where the timber-alternative could be used. “We’re mostly focused on the fire performance – what happens if you have a load-bearing element when it’s subjected to a fire?” he said. “My research is to find out how it performs in a fire and how it affects the mechanical response.” Bamboo used in construction would be rarely used in its raw form – the untreated and full cylinders – but transformed into stronger and more versatile materials such as Cross Laminated Timber or Laminated Veneer Lumber, both similar methods of applying glue to wood (but in bamboo’s case, grass) fibres.

Achieving strength and extensibility at the same time has so far been a great challenge in material engineering: increasing strength has meant losing extensibility and vice versa. Now Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland researchers have succeeded in overcoming this challenge, inspired by nature. The researchers created a truly new bio-based material by gluing together wood cellulose fibers and the silk protein found in spider web threads. The result is a very firm and resilient material which could be used in the future as a possible replacement for plastic, as part of bio-based composites and in medical applications, surgical fibers, textile industry, and packaging. According to Aalto University Professor Markus Linder, nature offers great ingredients for developing new materials… The advantage with both of these materials is that, unlike plastic, they are biodegradable and do not damage nature the same way micro-plastic do.

The growing timber manufacturing industry faces challenges due to increasing geometric complexity of architectural designs. Complex and structurally efficient curved geometries are nowadays easily designed but still involve intensive manufacturing and excessive machining. We propose an efficient form-giving mechanism for large-scale curved mass timber by using bilayered wood structures capable of self-shaping by moisture content changes. The challenge lies in the requirement of profound material knowledge for analysis and prediction of the deformation in function of setup and boundary conditions. Using time- and moisture-dependent mechanical simulations, we demonstrate the contributions of different wood-specific deformation mechanisms on the self-shaping of large-scale elements. Our results outline how to address problems such as shape prediction, sharp moisture gradients, and natural variability in material parameters in light of an efficient industrial manufacturing.

AUSTRALIA — Around 25 per cent of Australians have seen The Ultimate Renewable™ campaign run by Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA), which research shows is positively changing public opinions on forestry and wood. A stand-out result from the campaign was that two in three people who had seen the ads agreed with the statement “I think it is okay to harvest and replant Australian native forests”, which is more than 10 per cent higher than those who had not seen the ads. …The new brand builds upon the previous Wood.Naturally Better™ program that successfully improved the public’s understanding about using wood to help tackle climate change. By continuing the partnership with Planet Ark and its Make It Wood website, including featuring Peter Maddison from Grand Designs Australia, the new advertising extends the existing message and introduces renewability. FWPA managing director, Ric Sinclair, explained the effectiveness of the campaign.

A major fire has reduced a four-storey timber-framed block of flats to ashes. The fire ripped through the flats at Sherbrooke Way, Worcester Park in South-West London during the early hours of Monday, September 9. At the height of the blaze some 127 firefighters were on the scene. At this stage there are no reported casualties. The inferno follows a number of major timber fires at completed residential developments this year including the Beechmere retirement development in Crewe in August and Barking Riverside in London in June. “This latest fire underlines the unsuitability and potential danger of using timber frame construction. Developers and housing associations should reconsider its use,” said Stephen Elliott, chairman of the British Association of Reinforcement. “As proven by the spate of recent major fires, lightweight timber structures can be a fire risk. They simply do not offer the inherent fire resistance of concrete structures.”

If New Zealand’s ambition is to be a zero carbon economy by 2050 then it must nurture its wood industry. Many industries claim to be driving towards lower emissions but none have the low carbon profile of the wood sector. The WPMA Chair, Brian Stanley, says; “no other major industry in New Zealand can deliver carbon sequestration, carbon storage and emissions reduction like the wood industry”. Mr Stanley adds, “….and the industry now has independent, third-party certification extending right from the forest to the marketplace to prove that our wood-based packaging and construction products do the right thing by the environment. Our customers in New Zealand and overseas expect no less”. Last night in Rotorua, WPMA highlighted that both major international certification programmes for forestry: Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification and Forest Stewardship Council guarantee that wood products from New Zealand come from sustainably-managed forests. 

Architects have voiced concerns that the latest major blaze at a timber-framed housing development could wrongly demonise a “perfectly safe” building material. Fire destroyed a JTP-designed four-storey apartment building at Worcester Park in the early hours of yesterday in a blaze that firefighters said was “well-developed and intense” by the time they arrived on the scene.  …Ash Sakula Architects founding partner Robert Sakula said councils and other social landlords had exhibited a marked push away from exterior cladding or components that were in any way combustible in the wake of 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire. …But he stressed that structural timber was a separate issue. “It’s not that there is anything actually wrong with timber frame if it’s done properly. Fire shouldn’t be able to get into the cavity,” he said.