Wood for Good (WfG) was ahead of the curve on carbon. The UK campaign, focused particularly on growing use of timber in construction, launched as the world stepped excitedly into the bold new future of the third millennium 22 years ago. That makes it one of the longest running national timber promotions, and from the outset it was talking about the low-carbon and broader environmental benefits of using more wood more widely.

“At the time, discussion around carbon was not mainstream, people didn’t talk about the embodied carbon of a building’s fabric and Environmental Performance Declarations (EPDs) and lifecycle assessment (LCA) were not the norm,” said WfG director Sarah Virgo.

Two decades on, of course, the picture is somewhat different. The third millennium looks distinctly more complex and challenging and the message has well and truly sunk in that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the principal imperative for the future of humanity and that we need to shift the global economy to a circular bio-economy in a hurry.

“The landscape has changed,” said Ms Virgo. “There’s a real drive to decarbonise the built environment, to reduce the embodied carbon value of projects and to select materials that contribute to this.”

Wood for Good, meanwhile, has not sat back to congratulate itself on its foresight. If anything, as actual evidence of climate change becomes increasingly clear, its task, to persuade policy and business decision makers that wood is the prime, renewable material for building the bio-economy, takes on greater urgency. At the same time, increased understanding of timber’s wider properties is developing and adding impact to its messaging.

“Our mission remains to increase demand for wood as a material through promotion of its environmental, technical and aesthetic benefits,” said Ms Virgo. “However, in addition to promoting its low-carbon qualities we are now focusing even more on the circularity of wood as a product and its health and well-being benefits.”

Wood for Good was established by the UK Confederation of Forest Industries (Confor) and Swedish Wood, the communications and marketing arm of the Swedish Forest Industries Federation. Today they remain its co-owners and main funders.

“Wood for Good was founded out of the mutual desire of both to create one promotional organisation that could increase demand for both home-grown and imported timber,” said Ms Virgo. “In addition we have a number of larger business and public sector supporters, such as sawmillers BSW and James Jones, and Timber Development UK and Scottish Forestry. They are all very passionate about the purpose of Wood for Good’s work. “Contributions are entirely voluntary. We understand the constraints of budgets and this has never prevented us from working with someone who has a strong desire to work with us.”

The campaign’s support base has continued to grow and diversify in recent years.

“Our support comes from across the entire supply chain and we’ve added a few new supporters from the rest of Europe,” said Ms Virgo. “It’s important for us that different product and supply areas are represented in our work. About a year ago, it was also great to welcome the PEFC as a supporter – after all, sustainable procurement and forest management are at the core of our messaging when we’re discussing carbon.”

Wood for Good’s budget fluctuates, dependent on activities and, of course, supporter contributions and it increased to cover the launch of the new campaign, Wood CO2ts less.

Ms Virgo described it as “generally very modest”, averaging in the low six figures, but she believes this and having a small team has been turned into a strength, increasing focus and inspiring creativity.

“We consistently out-perform targets and increase our reach and visibility on our channels. In particular, our website views increase on average around 20% each year and our PR reaches millions in design and construction sectors.”

The campaign’s core target audiences are construction professionals; architects and other specifiers, engineers and building contractors. It also keeps timber and forestry sectors informed on its work and shares market insights and construction case studies with them.

It focuses on messaging through digital channels in particular; its own website, newsletters and social media. Supporters also increase the reach of its messaging to their customers via their own communications and it also works closely with key UK timber trade media, including TTJ, Forestry and Timber News and Structural Timber Magazine.

The Wood CO2ts less campaign, launched in 2020, has had particular impact and outreach, picked up and further broadcast by supporters and the wider timber sector.

The object is to “break down the carbon story around wood into simple facts”.

  • Using sustainably-sourced wood helps mitigate effects of climate change through CO2 capture and storage;
  • wood is part of a circular economy; naturally renewable it can be repaired, recycled and reused in other products several times;
  • wood has biophilic benefits – it’s good for our health, when used in construction, having a calming effect, improving air quality and increasing attention span to spur creativity.

“The Wood CO2ts less campaign, in particular, was a hit with our target audiences,” said Ms Virgo. “We saw 50,000 people visit our website and over 100 pieces of media coverage in the first six months. We’ve also seen visitors continue to increase, which I believe is the continuing impact of the campaign – people are returning to view case studies, news and other information about wood.”

Wood CO2ts less also got strong buy-in from construction professionals.

“Since launching, we’ve created a network of ambassadors from the architectural and engineering sectors,” said Ms Virgo. “These are businesses and individuals who saw the campaign and wanted to be associated with it and the core message of wood being a low-carbon solution for the built environment.”

Looking forward, Wood for Good is upbeat about prospects for growing the use of timber, but knows it can’t rest on its achievements to date and must keep evolving.

“It’s absolutely the best time to be talking about using and building more with timber,” said Ms Virgo. “Forestry and timber have finally begun to receive recognition for the role they’ll play in helping decarbonise the built environment and moving us towards net zero.

“But we can’t become complacent about this. It’s why pushing timber conversations is still important. In the architecture, design and construction worlds, conversation is moving on from discussions about embodied carbon in buildings to circularity. It’s one of the reasons we are currently developing a new campaign to promote timber’s inherent circular properties.”