Wood vs. Alternatives
» Water & Air Quality
Water & Air Quality
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Besides supplying wood, responsibly managed forests provide clean water and air.
Forest soils are like a sponge, absorbing large volumes of water and releasing it slowly into rivers and creeks. Healthy forests filter and cleanse water runoff. Their importance can't be overstated: most of California's fresh water originates in the upper catchments of our forested watersheds.
While growing, trees primarily consume solar energy, carbon dioxide, water, soil nutrients and dissolved minerals. Trees "inhale" CO2 from the air, returning pure oxygen.
Active forest management can help clean the air and fight global warming. Robust, growing forests absorb greenhouse gases at a high rate. Absorbed carbon becomes a part of each wood molecule. When wood is used in construction, atmospheric carbon is effectively stored for many decades.
Some people think steel studs are a better environmental building choice than wood. But steel making requires a tremendous amount of water and energy. Iron ore must be mined and then smeltered and shaped. It takes 9 times the energy to forge a steel stud than to saw up a wooden one. This translates directly into much higher amounts of air and water pollution: producing steel releases 15 times the sulphur dioxide (SO2) and 27 times the nitrous oxide (NOx) than processing logs into lumber. And making steel requires 25 times the amount of water.
Mining and smeltering steel and aluminum relies on the combustion of non-renewable fossil fuels. This means the release of toxic pollutants as well as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Even substituting concrete for wood results in a greater use of fossil fuels.
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