Instead of metal or plastic, use wood and save the planet?
To anyone worried about using wood furniture in their interior design thinking about deforestation and global warming, you may be surprised by the latest United nations report. According to the UN, a table made of wood instead of metal or plastic can cut carbon emissions! In fact, most of our interior wood products including floors, furniture, and doors, use much less energy to produce compared to metal or plastic alternatives, and wood stores carbon for years to come. The same report stated that the carbon that is stored in wood products offsets all the greenhouse gasses involved in their production.
How to Use Wood Responsibly
With all we hear about deforestation and illegal logging activities it is only natural to assume alternatives are better. However, there is a way to use wood and not promote the destruction of our environment. If we can produce construction material and other wood products from sustainable sources than we can replace high carbon producing alternatives with wood and not effect ecosystems or global ecology. Sustainable means you replace what you take, therefore you can keep taking.
Alternatives Use Fossil Fuels
Tree leaves, branches, and the soil they grow from all play an important role in absorbing carbon emissions. That is why, deforestation has been named as the reason for 12% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally. Meanwhile, concrete, plastic, and lightweight metal produces more greenhouse gasses as fossil fuels are used to produce the energy needed to manufacture and recycle them. Wood is a much better product to use as its benefits when alive are obvious, we just must wait for it to grow.
Why Wood is “a Hard Sell”?
In recent years, while we’re experiencing the effects of global warming, wood is a hard sell. The key to promoting its use is to ensure that products made from wood are produced using sustainable sources. You can buy the most beautiful jacket at an incredible price, but if it’s revealed that it was made using child labour it becomes repulsive. Likewise wood products can seem that way with all the natural disasters caused by global warming. That is why Guelph Heritage Woodworking only uses wood from sustainable forests. Yet one more reason to choose our wood products over so called green or recycled materials. Also read “Plastic pollution on course to double by 2030”.
Buy a beautiful wood door, furniture, or a simple Charcuterie platter from GH Woodworking, use wood and save the planet.