National Recycling Week kicked off this week, and Planet Ark is calling on builders and renovators to mark the occasion by choosing recycled materials including timber. Source: The Fifth Estate
Planet Ark head of campaigns Brad Gray said that while recycled timber was still not widely available on a major project scale for delivering entire buildings, there were “plenty of options” at the homeowner, home builder and renovator scale.
There were great examples of major projects using recycled timber well, he said, such as Library at the Dock in Melbourne, which is clad in recycled timber.
There are many creative reuses for timber, he said.
“Recycled wood is also good for the connection back to history [in a building], so it is often used for display areas,” Mr Gray said.
“One of the reasons to use recycled timber is it has historic character – and you often just have to polish it up.”
In carbon footprint terms, the benefit is that reusing timber means continuing to store carbon that dates back to the time of the original trees being harvested.
In a building like Westminster Hall in London – that’s all the way back at 1299 AD.
Preparing timber for reuse is also not an enormously energy-intensive or technology-intensive process, he said.
It’s a job creator – and in the case of individuals, there is more personal satisfaction and less of a footprint created by restoring a piece of furniture found at an op-shop than wielding the Allen key on something new from IKEA.
There are other benefits too, he said, including research that shows people who work in or visit commercial office environments that feature an extensive use of timber perceive them as warmer, calmer and more supportive.
The research was released in a report Wood – Housing, Health and Humanity earlier this year.
“People who work in offices where there is wood used have lower heart rates and lower stress levels,” Mr Gray said.
Studies have also shown benefits for students in classrooms where wood is used, and benefits for people in aged care facilities.
To coincide with Recycling Week, the organisation has also just released its latest report, All Sorted, about recycling in Australia.
The report draws on a range of international and national studies and a survey of 115 councils across Australia.
The good news is that Australia’s rate of household waste recycling at 51% is higher than the 42% mean recycling rate of all 28 countries in the European Union.
However, EU countries generally send less of the non-recyclable remainder to landfill due to the use of incineration.
The EU also has stronger product stewardship rules around some categories of products, such as batteries.
