Summary
• The first meeting of the iWPN was held in Vancouver in early October.
• Delegates from around the globe attended.
• The implications of the COP15 process were discussed.
• iWPN may organise a series of webinars.
“No trees were killed in the creation of this building,” was the proud, but somewhat misguided claim of a member of staff leading a tour of the Richmond Oval, the long track skating venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, which features extensive use of wood.
And, according to Kelly McCloskey, creator of the International Wood Promotion Network (iWPN), it was a comment that characterised the sort of prejudice and ignorance that still existed with regard to wood and wood products.
A key task of the iWPN, he said, was to dispel such myths and the purpose of its first meeting in Vancouver last month, which included a visit to the Oval, was to discuss wood promotion best practice.
Thirty delegates from North America, Australia, New Zealand and Europe attended the event, their focus on how promotion could most effectively communicate key messages about wood to a variety of audiences who were bombarded on all sides with conflicting information about sustainability, climate change and the low carbon economy.
Although it was difficult in a recession to enthuse the industry about the importance of using hard-hitting messages about timber’s ability to play a strategic part in the low carbon economy, it was important to communicate the fact that these messages could help companies to compete effectively against other building materials. The downturn has not diminished the environmental marketing efforts of the concrete and steel industries.
Credible messaging
Bruce Anderson of Ottawa-based market research company Harris Decima presented research on consumer attitudes to the issue of climate change. He also commented on how the wood industry could develop credible messaging for different audiences on wood’s benefits, saying that a key audience for the industry should be what he called “fashion forward professionals” – architects and designers who like to be on the leading edge both aesthetically and environmentally.
Other targets included “conventional professionals” who were aware of, but not at the leading edge of fashion, and regulators, who were difficult to communicate with. Green consumers were also important as interest in achieving a lower carbon footprint continues to grow .
The reality, said Mr Anderson, was that most people had no desire to become climate change experts. Above all, they needed reassurance that it was OK to use wood, so the industry’s main promotional thrust should concentrate on mass (consumer) markets with credible messages about wood’s practicality, affordability and sustainability.
This strategy corresponded with the approach taken in France with the ‘Le bois c’est essentiel’ campaign, which started as a consumer promotion. Jan Söderlind of Skogsindustrierna presented the results of a survey of French consumers from 2007, which showed that there was still a good deal of scepticism that either government or industry were trustworthy stewards of the forest. It also found that, while 63% of respondents strongly agreed with the statement that wood is an environmentally-friendly material, only 15% accepted that using more wood reduces the greenhouse effect. Just 14% believed that forests in France were expanding and just 12% that tree cover across Europe was growing.
Today the French government is actively pushing the use of timber, with President Sarkozy introducing a voluntary code in early 2010, which will encourage an increase in wood consumption in new buildings by a factor of 10 (TTJ October 3/10). He has also announced a €100m strategic investment fund, drawn from both public and private sources for a restructuring and consolidation of the timber industry to improve its competitiveness.
Sylvan Labbé of the Québec Wood Export Bureau addressed the issue of use of timber in construction by promoting its carbon benefits. He concentrated on demystifying the COP15 (the 15th Conference of the Parties) process to negotiate a new climate change agreement to replace the Kyoto Accord, which is part of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen next month.
The main goal of the timber industry is to gain recognition of the fact that wood products continue to store carbon after trees are harvested. Under Kyoto, carbon is only counted while trees are still standing (the carbon sink effect).
Achieving recognition of the carbon store effect would be a great prize, since it would enable the industry to complete the cradle to grave assessment of the impact of wood products and buildings on the environment – an assessment that is likely to show that wood products have a far lower carbon footprint than other building materials.
Future meetings
At the end of the inaugural iWPN workshop, delegates agreed that it would be important to maintain the momentum it had created and a number of ideas were canvassed as to how this could best be done.
One idea was to organise a series of webinars on such subjects as how to design using wood solutions; design software; the implications of the COP15 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and wood education in its broadest sense. These webinars will be available to all free of charge and more details will be announced shortly.
Formed in mid-2008, the iWPN was the brainchild of Kelly McCloskey of WoodWorks Canada, which handles wood promotion in the US and Canada on behalf of the Canadian Wood Products Council. Other founder members include Andrew Dunn of the Timber Development Association of New South Wales and Geoff Henley of New Zealand Wood.
