Make It Wood
Do your world some good by using responsibly sourced wood
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What is Make It Wood?
The Make It Wood program aims to encourage the increased use of responsibly sourced wood as a building material and a main choice for furniture, toys, and other household items. Responsibly sourced, certified wood is the only building material that helps tackle climate change; it’s renewable, it stores carbon and it consumes minimal energy in its production.
There is a growing awareness of the importance of connecting buildings with the natural world, and how the use of biophilic design and using natural elements like wood and indoor plants can bring the benefits of nature indoors. Planet Ark’s report Wood – Nature Inspired Design outlines the importance of connecting buildings with the natural world and how biophilic design can benefit human health and wellbeing.
Wood: Nature Inspired Design report
PDF (7.96 MB)
Make It Wood
Why use responsibly sourced wood?
When sourced responsibly, wood can play a big part in helping tackle climate change. This is because wood is a low-carbon option for building; it is renewable, it sequesters carbon during the growth phase, it stores carbon for the long-term, and it has a lower embodied energy than many other building materials. As a result, using wood allows us to live a low-carbon lifestyle.
Wood is unique among building materials because it is a natural carbon store – approximately 50 per cent of its dry weight is carbon. Products made from responsibly sourced wood store the carbon that growing trees have removed from the air.
The production and processing of wood uses much less energy – called embodied energy – than most other building materials, giving wood products a significantly lower carbon footprint. Wood can be used to substitute for materials that require larger amounts of fossil fuels to be produced.
Planet Ark believes that what remains of our high conservation forests must be protected and treasured. As such, Planet Ark opposes the logging of high conservation value forest for wood products and clearance for plantations, as this will have negative impacts on biodiversity.
The details of Planet Ark's positions on the use of responsibly sourced wood as a building material can be viewed here.