Mass Timber Sustainability a Hoax?
Thinking about building with wood for its sustainability?
Mass timber is not all it’s cracked up to be.
The timber industry continues to stack the deck by failing to use proper life cycle analysis when it claims that mass timber is a more environmentally sensitive building material than concrete.
They use only up-front carbon analysis, and even that fails to capture all of the carbon costs/emissions associated with harvesting, processing and transport.
A milestone peer-reviewed study undertaken by a consortium of European and global trade organizations argues that the underpinnings of the carbon neutrality attributes of bio-based construction products are seriously flawed and do not present an accurate picture of the carbon substitution of the temporary carbon storage benefits of harvested wood building products.
The concrete industry, through its research partnership with MIT’s Concrete Sustainability Hub, is making great strides in reducing concrete’s carbon footprint and making the built environment more efficient. Contact us to learn how to build better with ICF/Concrete.