Where does your frame come from?

When choosing building materials it is important to think about where they come from.

You can’t replant the ore and rocks extracted from the planet for steel and concrete but with certified wood you can guarantee a tree is replanted.

Certified forest plantations plant roughly two to three trees for every tree harvested. Unfortunately, with iron ore, which is used to create steel, you cannot refill the hole in ground that mining has left.

Concrete and steel each account for around 8 per cent of global GHG emissions, which is more than what any individual country produces except for the US and China. On average 2 tonnes of CO2 are emitted to manufacture one tonne of steel, whereas wood removes more CO2 from the atmosphere than it emits during manufacture.

In fact, 1 cubic metre of wood contains just shy of 1 tonne of CO2 (more or less depending on the species of tree). This is because trees absorb CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow and store it as carbon.

So, if you want to help in the fight against climate change and create a greener future for all, think about where your frame comes from. Is it renewable? Is it sustainable? Is it a low embodied energy material? Wood is all of these things and by choosing certified wood you are helping our planet and creating a greener future.