American hardwood: could this be the most environmentally friendly building
Limited.
material on the planet? By Rupert Oliver (image below)
The American hardwood industry believes it has an environmental profile that is hard to beat. In fact it’s so confident of this claim that it is subjecting its production and distribution chain to independent environmental assessment. It also wants its major buyers around the world to impose tough measures requiring the removal of environmentally risky materials from supply chains.
Of all the numerous environmental benefits of American hardwoods, just one should make many users and specifiers of building materials sit up and take notice. This is the fact – supported by national forest assessments undertaken by the U.S. federal government every ten years – that between 1953 and 2007, the volume of hardwood standing in U.S. forests more than doubled from 5 billion m3 to 11.4 billion m3. This huge expansion of the resource – which actually coincides with a period of significant increase in U.S. and international wood demand, is testament to a long term commitment to good forest governance and sustainable hardwood production in the United States.
Hardwoods make up a very major component of the U.S. forests and wood products industry. They represent 43% of the nation’s forest growing stock (softwood represent the remaining 57%). Around 25% (60 million m3) of total annual U.S. production of lumber, plywood and veneer (250 million m3) comprises hardwood. The main expanse of hardwood forests stretch from the Northeast corner of the continental United States to the Southern coast and west to beyond the Mississippi River. There is also a smaller area of hardwood production in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
The U.S. hardwood resource is significant not only for its size, but also for its rich diversity. The
|86| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE , Director, Forest Industries Intelligence
American hardwood forest is composed of hundreds of species, of which at least 30 are of significant commercial value. In the Eastern states, red and white oak species are the most prevalent hardwoods, followed by hard and soft maples, tulipwood, hickory, sweetgum and ash. Red alder is the main commercial hardwood species produced in the North-Western states.
While softwood tends to be used for structural applications in construction, where the need for volume supply at low cost outweighs the need for good appearance, hardwoods are valued for finishing applications such as cabinetry, flooring, mouldings and trim, kitchen tops and shop-fitting.
Backed by a diverse and expanding resource and with rising international concern for sustainability, U.S. hardwoods are playing an increasingly important role in the supply of raw materials to the world’s building and furniture industries. The U.S. contributes nearly one fifth of the world’s production of hardwood saw and veneer logs. It is also the largest external supplier of hardwood to the EU, accounting for one quarter of all imports of hardwood lumber
and veneer. Around 20% of all hardwood consumed in the UK derives from the United States.
Despite its global significance, the U.S. hardwood industry is not made up of big faceless industrial conglomerates. It is very much a community affair. Some four million individuals and other private entities own the 110 million hectares of hardwood and mixed oak-pine forest types in the U.S. Of the private hardwood timber produced in the U.S., only 17% derives from company owned lands and the remainder comes from non- corporate, family forest owners. There are over 14,000 hardwood businesses in the U.S., mainly small and family owned.
This ownership structure has major implications for forestry practices and environmental impacts. The main motivation for owning hardwood forests in the U.S. is usually not timber production at all, but simply the
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