Wood is Good: How We’re Fighting for Green Building Materials
Melissa Harden is a Public Affairs Manager at AFF.
These days, who doesn’t want to build green? Wood, especially wood from American Tree Farm System certified forests, is one of the greenest building materials out there.
Unfortunately, a new U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) rating system still leaves this green building material high and dry—proposed changes continue to discriminate against wood products compared to other materials.
USGBC is home to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system (LEED), one of the most widely used green building rating systems—a tool that many builders use to show their buildings are “green”.
While wood is an energy efficient, renewable, carbon sequestering material, LEED has done very little to promote the environmental benefits of wood or to encourage builders to choose wood products—essentially blocking wood from the growing green building market.
USGBC recently released its new rating system LEED 2012, which will take effect in 2012. The changes proposed are significant—unfortunately, it doesn’t change the story for wood or increase recognition of American Tree Farm System wood.
Builders and architects can collect few credits under LEED for using wood, and the credits that are related to wood products are even more restrictive. For example, under the current LEED system, the forest certification credit does not recognize the two largest forest certification standards in North America, the American Tree Farm System® and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, only wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council is recognized. LEED 2012 is even more restrictive in only recognizing “FSC Pure” certified wood products. Very few North American wood products are certified as FSC Pure.
While LEED 2012 does offer some new changes with seeming potential for increased recognition of wood products, these new changes come with additional questions. For example, LEED 2012 would allow materials, like wood, to achieve recognition through performance-based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs).
LCA and EPDs are tools that scientifically measure and describe the environmental impacts of materials. However, there are more questions than answers for these new tools in LEED, so it is not possible to determine how wood will be treated.
LEED 2012 also recognizes products that are “biobased,” but they rely on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s definition and database of BioPreferred products. USDA’s BioPreferred program currently excludes products with a mature market—thus including most paper and wood products.
Bottom line, the only way for wood to get recognized under LEED 2012 is under the local sourcing credit, and this credit recognizes all local materials—not just wood. Therefore, any material, regardless of its environmental impact, can achieve this credit. LEED 2012 continues to do very little to promote the environmental benefits of wood products.
The American Forest Foundation, and its sustainable woodlands program the American Tree Farm System, know that healthy markets mean healthy forests. Tree Farmers need all the tools and resources they can get to keep their forests healthy and keep them intact for future generations. LEED is a barrier to strong healthy wood markets, and we will continue to urge the U.S. Green Building Council to give wood more recognition by working with government agencies and champions in Congress to recognize multiple green building rating systems in policies.
To join in the fight to get your wood recognized in green building markets, sign up for the American Tree Farm System’s Grassroots Action Network at
www.familyforestaction.org
.
Photo credit: Flickr's sosni
