Timber is one of our most circular, sustainable building materials

Due to a tree’s ability to store carbon until it rots, decays or burns, designing and constructing buildings using timber significantly reduces potential greenhouse gas emissions. Particularly if sourced from sustainably-managed forests, timber building products are an environmentally friendly choice. But more than that, timber can be a truly circular economy product.

What is circular economy?

Circular economy is a framework that supports businesses and communities to thrive in a climate and resource constrained world by designing out waste and pollution, extending the use of assets and materials, and regenerating natural systems. It is a system-based thinking approach, regenerative by intention and design.

How is mass engineered timber circular?

Decreasing reliance on finite materials to prioritise renewable resources, such as timber, is a key concept of the circular economy. When mass engineered timber (MET) is harvested from certified sustainably managed forests, it can play an important role in the circular economy and can have a lower carbon footprint than traditional building materials.

MET is generally constructed through the gluing together of multiple layers of wood, allowing for thinner and lighter layers of wood. This reduces the amount timber needed, enabling resource conservation. Due to its engineered nature, it is less susceptible to warping or splitting, increasing its lifespan and by extension, longevity of buildings.

MET also allows for modular design and construction, helping to design out waste and pollution at the start. Modular timber buildings are assembled from prefabrication which reduces waste and can support disassembly at end-of-life, enabling components to be re-purposed. By using MET in a circular economy approach, we can promote sustainable forest management, design out and reduce waste whilst conserving finite resources.

MET is lightweight yet strong and requires less carbon dioxide to manufacture, as compared to steel and concrete. On average, producing a product from steel requires 19 times more energy than from timber; 45 times more to produce a plastic product and 85 times more to make an aluminium product (Timber NSW).

Debunking myths about timber buildings

However, even though MET is a highly sustainable building material that also encourages a greater sense of wellbeing for building occupants, according to the biophilia hypothesis, which involves increasing connectivity with nature by using natural elements indoors, questions still exist about its inherent benefits as a construction material.

In this video, we debunk some of the most prevalent myths about MET.

Busting the myths on timber buildings – Aurecon senior structural engineers debunk some of the myths on timber buildings – from them not being fire resistant, to being susceptible to termites!

As we need to build 10,000+ buildings a day to cater for a 10 billion world population by 2050, and building and construction represent almost 40 per cent of all carbon emissions, there is a clear case for using timber in greater proportions.

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