Wood has always been a very popular material. Not only as furniture and decoration inside and outside your house, but also for building the house itself. Building a house completely made out of wood may seem the most sustainable choice there is. After all, wood is a natural material and you would think that means it’s also sustainable. Unfortunately, the reality is much more complex.
Wood has a good image when it comes to sustainability. It definitely has some benefits over several other materials. It stores carbon while growing, and even when it’s cut, it will still keep a substantial portion of that. Wood is also a renewable resource that grows naturally. Unfortunately, deforestation is a big issue.
Since humans started cutting down forests, we’ve lost about 46% of all the trees in the world (Source). Around 17 percent of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed in the past 50 years. If you look at recent figures, you will see that approximately 15 billion trees are cut each year, whereas only 5 billion are replanted. Deforestation is not only a threat to many animals as their living environment is destroyed, but it’s also a major factor in global warming. Moreover, it also has a negative influence on the water cycle and it causes soil erosion, which can eventually lead to desertification, a very threatening ecosystem change.
Even if you would only use wood that comes from sustainably managed forests, there are still some negative aspects to take into consideration. To make timber suitable as a building material, it requires a lot of treatments. You would need to add fire retardants (which can be toxic and provide a false sense of security when it comes to fire safety and make it more resistant against weather influences.
Rockpanel Woods - Unique by nature. Explore the infinite creative possibilities of wood, without its natural limits.
But even with all of those treatments, you will experience rot or delamination with real timber, and they would still not be firesafe. Both of these factors make wood a lot less durable and therefore less sustainable.
Rockpanel Woods, on the other hand, is a product of nature, as it’s produced from natural basalt and (up to 50%) recycled content. The earth creates way more of this volcanic rock each year than we could ever use to create our products. That makes Rockpanel Woods facade panels a truly renewable source. And in addition, the material is also completely recyclable. That means you can use stone wool over and over again to create new durable, firesafe building materials without loss of quality.
Every single year, the ROCKWOOL Group continues to progress towards our sustainability goals. Download our Sustainability Report to learn more about our progress, achievements and our new commitments:
We manufacture board material mostly used in ventilated constructions, for facade cladding, roof detailing, soffits and fascias.
