Category Archives: Wood, Paper & Green Building

Superdrug is proud to announce that it has removed all plastic applicators from own brand tampons, and launched it’s first own brand range of organic menstrual products. …studies have found that globally 45 billion menstrual products are disposed of yearly… It’s clear that period plastic is an ongoing issue… With over 200,000 tonnes of sanitary product material believed to end up in UK landfill every year, the discontinuation of own brand plastic tampon applicators at Superdrug will save over 418kg of plastic each year… The new range uses only ethical and sustainably sourced elements. …the absorbent core uses materials obtained from PEFC certified wood, rather than a synthetic polymer, ensuring that the range uses material sourced from sustainable managed forests. The packaging … boxes and paper use Forest Stewardship Council certified wood.

That the toilet paper industry is a major threat to forests and the environment is a fact. A 2019 report from the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council indicates how the major brands of toilet paper and ‘wipes’ predominantly use wood from Canada’s ancient boreal forests. …So what sustainable alternatives are there? Fortunately, there is a solution on the horizon: the production and sale of hemp toilet paper. …Hemp produces four times more cellulose fibers per hectare compared to trees and takes 4-5 months to grow, while trees take 8-100 years. …Furthermore, it is the best source of biomass in the world, as 10 tons of hemp per acre can be produced. …Hemp has up to 85% cellulose, almost three times more than trees.

Is this the year of the toilet roll? This previously-ignored bathroom item is having its day – disappearing off supermarket shelves with stunning speed. According to Dimitrios Tsivrikos, at University College London, toilet paper has now become an “icon” of mass panic. …Over the years, the environmental credentials of the humble bog roll have improved, but efforts seem to have slackened off recently. Most mainstream brands are using less recycled material now than they were in 2011. …When you think about what goes into the production of toilet paper – forest depletion, bleaching, water, packaging and transport – the amount of water used in a bidet is trivial in comparison. …It’s hard to see us switching to bidets in Ireland. Though maybe we could, at some point, think about using more of the recycled stuff.

Phil Twyford

This year’s implementation of Labour’s long-promised policy to use government procurement to support the wood processing sector will be a masterstroke for jobs, the economy, the environment and politically for Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford. So why the need for a government procurement policy on construction material use favouring sustainable materials? In short, jobs. More than 100,000 of them, made up of 38,500 people employed by the forestry and wood processing sector directly, and more than 65,000 indirect jobs. …Only the Government has a mandate to consider the bigger picture impact of procurement policy on NZ Inc in terms of jobs, climate change, balance of payments, wellness, waste and a whole range of other aspects that favour wood over its climate polluting alternatives concrete and steel. Plus, a policy will tip off building developers and designers that wood solutions now exist for practically all building types, and are cost competitive, faster and safer to build.

A group of engineering and science students who met during a free University of Auckland venture development programme run last summer, are preparing to take their building automation ideas to the world. Nikau Robotics is utilising leading-edge automation technology to increase productivity for small and medium construction businesses. The team is developing a smart computer numerical control (CNC) wood router that can intake a stack of wooden panels and process them automatically to pre-cut, drill, and carve wooden panels. The machine they have designed is highly portable to enable onsite use for fast, accurate cuts of wood without the need for external suppliers. Mechatronics Engineering student Harrison Lawton assisted in a home reno, noting how strenuous and repetitive the work was. …”From my background in robotics, I saw the ideal characteristics for automation. …so I began to design my own machine.”

Few retailers can rival the global footprint of Swedish furniture giant Ikea. …By some estimates, the company’s ready-to-assemble furniture at one point used as much as 1 percent of the world’s wood supply. But if Ikea’s manufacturing operations dwarf the rest of the industry’s, so do many of its sustainability initiatives… the company matched its outsize impact with a pledge: to use all recycled and Forest Stewardship Council–certified wood by the end of this year (at the close of 2019, Ikea reported that 97 percent of the wood that it used was defined as either FSC-certified or recycled wood…)—and to make all of its products with renewable materials by 2030. “Because we own our total value chain, we are able to work with the way that we source our materials and think carefully about what kind of materials we source,” says Dominique Fularski, who manages communications for Circular Ikea, the company’s sustainability team.

Wood is the resource the world is relying on for its low carbon future. It’s touted as a replacement for concrete and steel, fossil fuels, power and plastics. But is there enough of it to go around? …The attraction is clear. When wood is used in buildings, for example, carbon is taken out of the carbon cycle and stored for as long as the building stands. But according to preliminary findings from a joint United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and UN Food and Agriculture Organization study into future supply and demand scenarios, even if every effort were made to maximize global forest cover, doubling the use of wood in buildings, furniture and other products would reduce rather than increase the amount of carbon sequestered globally. “The projected increase in wood products carbon in this scenario was not enough to offset the loss in biomass carbon due to increased removals depleting forest stocks,” the authors wrote. 

The tower designer Modvion said it contributes to reducing the carbon footprint of a wind turbine while remaining as strong as the steel counterpart. The 30-metre prototype will undergo testing, but Modvion already has agreements in place to install 110-metre and 150-metre towers in 2022. “Laminated wood is stronger than steel at the same weight and by building in modules, the wind turbines can be taller. By building in wood, we also reduce carbon dioxide emissions in manufacturing and instead store carbon dioxide in the design”, said Otto Lundman, CEO of Modvion. Modvion also claimed wood retain the carbon dioxide absorbed by the trees while they grow. The wood towers are also “significantly” cheaper than steel towers, lowering the levelised cost of energy (LCoE) of the electricity produced at those wind sites. The tower modules can be transported by road more easily than some modern steel tower segments.

The so-called “Tiny House” movement originated in the United States thanks in part to the financial and real estate crisis of 2008. …Since then, the movement has spread to Europe, where downsizing, minimalism and environmentalism are in vogue. Micro houses, which generally do not exceed 45 square metres of living space, are mostly self-sufficient and therefore more environment- and climate-friendly than conventional houses. …In Switzerland, it is difficult to find a legal spot to park these houses. Nevertheless, the concept still has supporters in the country. …The basic construction consists of a wood frame insulated with wood fibre. The walls are made of pressed clay, a material that stores heat. Heating is provided by a wood-burning stove.

The timber industry will spend £500,000 on a series of fire tests over the next 18 months in a bid to demonstrate the safety of its product, ahead of a rule change that could see the product banned for use on the walls of large buildings. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) has been heralded in some quarters as the future of construction because of its low embodied carbon and the capacity to produce the panels offsite. But the government’s plans to lower the ban on combustible materials in the external wall of a building from 18m to 11m would effectively restrict its use to low-rise projects only. In an effort to demonstrate its safety, the three largest suppliers of CLT – KLH, Binderholz and Stora Enso – have invested in a series of fire tests to assess its performance.