Focus on being environmentally friendly

Edited by the Buildingtalk editorial team Jun 11, 2007

'Being Environmentally Friendly' - By Martin Chadwick, Design and Development Director, Panel Master UkK.

Timber is one of the world's oldest and most enduring and versatile building materials, which again is taking centre stage, as its green credentials make it a natural choice for everything from building structures, windows, doors, kitchens, libraries, bookcases, studies and plasma screen surrounds.

We all must now recognise and reward the low carbon footprint of timber.

Timbers green credentials come from it being 1.

A natural, renewable and sustainable material 2.

Recyclable or at worst convertible into energy, which avoids the need for old timbers to go to landfill.

Uses relatively little energy to convert from tree to finished product as compared with metal or plastics.

Carbon neutral as trees absorb CO2 whilst growing and particularly in tropical and equatorial regions have a global cooling effect Timber complements our built environment and blends in well into many landscapes in towns, villages and rural settings.

As a joinery material it has the great advantage of being easily worked and shaped and has good thermal and acoustic qualities allowing it to readily meet required insulation values, without costly additional design features.

It is great to see that planners now become increasingly sensitive to the need to conserve the characteristic of our built environment.

Timber is once again in demand as it satisfies the urgent need of a world looking to adopt green and sustainable solutions.