Two keynote presentations at the Wood Protection Association annual conference and two big questions for the audience of timber treatment and treated timber suppliers – and indeed the wider wood industry. First, how well would their products fit into an optimum raw material use, minimal waste circular economy; second how familiar were specifiers, notably architects and designers, with treated timber’s performance characteristics, impacts and benefits.
The answers to both, said speakers, Charlie Laws of Sustainable Construction Solutions and architect Peter Wilson of Timber Design Initiatives, could increasingly shape the course of their business.
The circular economy, Mr Law contended, was an increasing focus for development and investment for industry and government. The goal was combined economic growth and improving environmental performance.
“Industry’s traditional materials cycle has been linear; a take, make, dispose economy, with little thought on waste volumes to landfill, or how quickly it gets there,” said Mr Laws. “For a range of reasons, climate change, wider environmental degradation and resource security, we must move away from it.”
At the core of the circular economy model is resource efficiency. “It’s about reducing waste, inputs and energy use at source, then through product recycle and reuse hierarchies, maintenance and renewal, ensuring materials are kept within a closed loop economy as long as possible,” he said.
Timber and other biomaterials, had a natural head start in a circular economy given inherent renewability, embodied carbon credentials, and low processing and transport energy requirements.
“But while less wood waste now goes to landfill, it’s unclear how much effort is made to extend its circular economy life after use in initial products, before going to disposal through incineration or biogas extraction,” said Mr Laws.
The treated timber sector specifically, he added, had potential to thrive in a circular economy given its aim to broaden wood’s applications and prolong service life. But to maximise prospects it may need to rethink its approach in areas such as advice on maintenance, reuse and end of life processing, through to sales and service agreements. “In a circular economy, customers need to know precisely what’s in every product and how it’s made for recycling, disposal and materials return logistics,” said Mr Laws.
“Products will have materials passports which will be included in building information modeling systems. They’ll also be increasingly made to be simply dismantled so elements can be best reused or reprocessed.” Product maintenance and lease-hire agreements could also be part of the picture, including for treated timber.
“Here suppliers undertake refurbishment, renewal and replacement through a product’s service life, then take it away for recycling or disposal.”
Mr Wilson described wood’s outlook in construction as ‘incredibly exciting’, but said the timber sector, including the treated timber businesses, had to engage with architects, designers and engineers to make the most of its prospects.
Architects, he said, were increasingly attracted by wood’s environmental credentials, and excited by the new possibilities for large-scale building using latest developments in engineered wood. “We’re in the age of a new timber architecture and worldwide seeing new exemplars of advanced wood construction exploiting timber’s potential to the maximum.
He cited the Richmond ice skating arena in Canada with its 90m span glulam beams, London’s BSkyB building, the world’s biggest timber-based office block, and Bergen’s new 14-storey engineered-timber and modular construction TREET tower block.
“And architects and engineers are looking to push the barriers further,” he said. “Canadian architect Michael Green has submitted plans for a 35-storey building in Paris, Vienna’s Hoho block will be 24-storeys, a 34-storey tower is proposed for Stockholm, and Chicago’s SOM produced a blue print for a timber-based version of a 1960s 42-floor concrete tower.”
Underlining UK ambition for wood building were efforts to make engineered, modified and thermally treated construction timbers in homegrown material, with Edinburgh Napier University working on 20 new products.
However, while all this was happening, Mr Wilson said architects remained ‘sponges for misinformation’ about timber and still covered it insufficiently in training. Consequently some developed a prejudice for ‘natural’ untreated material.
“You need to educate them that treated timber can help achieve their ambition in wood construction, that they can trust it and that it will enhance timber’s performance and possibilities. They need education and to hear sensible arguments about treatment.”
