Summary
¦ The UK’s first Climate Week takes place next week.
¦ North Yorkshire Timber has concentrated on transport efficiency and waste reduction.
¦ Kronospan has reduced its CO2 emissions by almost a quarter in the past six years.
¦ EU legislation is likely to drive carbon footprinting into full life cycle analysis.
Taking pro-climate action can help promote your business, according to organisers of the UK’s first national Climate Week, from March 21-27 (www.climateweek.com).
“Businesses in every sector are taking positive steps to help combat climate change,” said Climate Week’s head of communications, Phil Drew. “Climate Week is a new opportunity to showcase the very best of what you’re doing. This might be by running a conference, releasing new research or simply publicising existing practical ways of doing business more environmentally. Climate Week is a chance for businesses to position themselves as offering leadership on an issue that is key to our future.”
How are companies in the timber sector enacting their commitment to the climate? North Yorkshire Timber (NYT) is a specialist merchant business with seven branches stretching from Ripon to North Shields.
“In today’s challenging market, it pays to be as cost-effective as possible throughout our operations,” said NYT’s marketing manager Christian Walker.
“With fuel costs rising it makes sense to maximise efficiency from our transport fleet – the bonus being a reduction in our vehicle emissions, which benefits the environment.”
Waste reduction
The other area NYT has been concentrating on is waste reduction. “We now recycle over 75% of our waste, including timber off-cuts and chippings, and all our packaging. This reduces our environmental impact and our costs at the same time,” said Mr Walker.
From timber merchant group to major wood product manufacturer is a vast step up in scale, but pro-climate activity covers much of the same territory. “Reducing climate impacts basically falls into three areas: reducing waste, getting energy consumption down, and using transport more efficiently,” said Kronospan managing director Ludwig Scheiblreiter.
Kronospan has been working on all three for a number of years, benefiting business costs and product carbon footprint. All Kronospan’s chipboard range and melamine-faced worktops have now been independently verified as “carbon positive”.
Reducing road deliveries
The company’s most recent step – a £4.32m investment in a new rail siding – will reduce road deliveries by around 7,000 movements per year. “Kronospan has identified the significant carbon impact of transporting raw materials to the factory and finished goods to our customers,” said Mr Scheiblreiter. “Using back-hauling, we have already reduced vehicle movements by over 20,000 each year.”
As a big energy user, the company has also made major investments in energy reduction, has cut its CO2 emissions by almost a quarter in the past six years, and is part of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme.
Over 97% of Kronospan’s waste is either recycled or recovered for energy use, and its work in using recycled wood raw material for chipboard has contributed to a position in which it offsets more carbon emissions than are produced by its manufacturing. “Recycling one tonne of wood reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 1.32 tonnes,” said Mr Scheiblreiter.
Like Kronospan, Stuart Harker at The Timber Trade Federation’s sustainability consultancy ReThink understands the importance of gathering and improving on CO2 data, for timber companies and for the sector as a whole.
“Whilst the industry has rightly concentrated its sustainability efforts on responsible sourcing, major contractors and their clients, who are setting the sustainability pace, require more specific product information,” he said.
“The industry should be meeting their needs with carbon and sustainability data in a clear format. The embodied carbon within the material is one aspect we can immediately address.
“Within the next 12-18 months, EU-driven legislation looks set to come our way requiring products to go beyond carbon footprint to full life cycle analysis of environmental impacts. The driver for this is likely to be the CEN TC 350 standard being developed to assess the sustainability of construction works and the environmental claims for construction products.
Product specific
“It’s difficult to be anything other than product-specific with life cycle analysis because products have varying sources, processing, uses, and recycling potential,” he continued. “However, ReThink is working with TTF members and the wider supply chain to align the industry with these coming changes, develop robust data and produce some general ‘rules of thumb’ to help construction clients make informed judgements on materials and construction methods.”
Methods of measurement, whether life cycle impacts or carbon calculations, are far from standard – a point made in last autumn’s government Low Carbon Construction Innovation and Growth Team final report. It proposed a requirement for a “whole-life carbon (embodied + operational) appraisal” linked to “a realistic price for carbon”: a signal, if one were needed, that carbon costs may have as much impact on future business life as landfill costs do today.
