5 Reasons Wood is the Ideal Eco-Friendly Building Material

In the 21^st century, as design trends become moreand more modern, sleek, and minimalist in their appeal, design materials aretrending more towards plastic and other composite materials. Plastic mouldingis replacing wood moulding. Metal legs are replacing wooden ones.

It’s an unfortunate side effect of design that just isn’tgood for our environment.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Wood is one of the most natural, renewable, and eco-friendlyresources available to us as designers and homeowners. Not only that, but it’salso one of the most versatile building materials on the market.

Here are 5 reasons why wood is the ideal building material of choice for the eco-conscious, no matter what you’re building.

1. Wood is eco-friendly

Harvested from the environment around us, wood is aneco-friendly choice for a lot of reasons.

First, trees absorb carbon throughout their life, pulling itfrom the atmosphere and storing it in their trunks as they grow. After treesare harvested, they continue to store that carbon even after they’ve beenturned into beautiful furniture legs, corbels, moulding, and other buildingmaterials, effectively pulling carbon from the atmosphere and keeping it out.

Second, wood manufacturing is considered a zero-wasteindustry. That means that all parts of the trees that we harvest are used tocreate an end product. For example:

• The majority of a tree is used to make lumber,which we then purchase and use to turn into table legs.
• Rougher cuts are used in things like palletsthat we use in freight shipments.
• Finally, leftover materials are used for suchthings as landscaping materials, fire starter materials, and even in placeslike stables where horse stalls are bedded in shavings.

Third, wood is biodegradable. Say something bad happens to yourfurniture, like a table leg breaks and you have to order a new one. What do youdo with the old one? You can throw it away without worry, unlike plasticproducts, some of which can take hundreds of years to decompose.

Fourth and finally, you can buy wood products withoutworrying about the environmental impact of clear cutting thanks to a processcalled selective cutting. Stringent third-party certification standards likethe FSC C-O-C help to ensure that trees are harvested responsibly and with aslittle environmental impact as possible. In fact, research suggests that forestsregain most of their ability to absorb carbon dioxide soon after the selectivecutting process.

2. Wood outlasts many other building materials

To further add to the eco-friendliness of wood, it is one ofthe longest-lasting building materials. If you’ve ever seen shows such asAntiques Roadshow, American Pickers, or Rehab Addict, then you know that woodproducts can have a lifespan of decades, and if well cared for, even a century.Even if it hasn’t always been well cared for, as is often the case on RehabAddict, wood products can be given new life with a little bit of TLC and stillbe functional and beautiful for years, and even decades, to come.

3. Wood is easy to maintain

In making your home more eco-friendly, you’re probablytrying to stay away from cleaning agents with harsh or damaging chemicals.You’ll be happy to learn, then, that wood products are best cared for not withharsh chemicals, but instead with a soft cloth and a wood-specific cleaner.(Honestly, as long as you don’t treat your wood products harshly, aside fromdusting from time to time, they’re practically maintenance-free.)

If the product you’re cleaning is used regularly, like theknobs and pulls in your kitchen or the chairs at your dining table, you’ll wantto clean them more often than, say, the balusters and newel posts on yourstaircase.

4. Wood is multi-functional

Wood products can replace many of the plastic products wehave in our households. Below is just a selection of the products we offer atOsborne that can replace plastic building materials you have.

• Drawer knobs and pulls
• Toppers and finials
• Moulding
• Chairs
• Benches
• Decorative columns and posts
• Other decorative elements, such as medallions, inlays, and appliques
• Cabinetry panels & corner posts
• Staircase balusters & newel posts
• Even hardware elements such as table slides and support brackets

5. Wood is easily customizable

Let’s say you broke a table leg on an antique table passeddown to you from your great grandmother. There’s no way you can find a stocktable leg to match. That’s okay! With our custom quote service, you can send usa photo of one of the intact table legs along with some measurements and whattype of wood you want, and we can custom make a table leg for you to match theothers and replace the one that broke.

Between wood’s inherent eco-friendliness, durability, easy maintenance, and nearly endless uses, it really is the ideal building material for the eco-conscious builder, designer, or homeowner. You can easily browse our selection of building products on our website, or request a quote on a custom product you’re interested in having us make.