The environmental benefits of wood veneer

Choosing and using renewable, sustainable wood veneer is an easy, convenient way to tackle climate change – through the environmental advantages of wood.

The efficient use of valuable species

Using veneer extends the use of a piece of timber. The wood that might be used in one solid piece a few visible centimeters wide can cover a far greater area when used as a veneer. Timber of lesser value can be used as a substrate to maximise the environmental advantages of choosing wood veneer.

Wood and carbon

Wood is not only a sustainable resource, but it actually stores (the technical term is sequesters) carbon.

Growing trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store the carbon so efficiently that about half the dry weight of a tree is carbon. This carbon remains locked up in the wood even when we use it for building products or furniture.

Wood and embodied energy

Compared to other materials (e.g. steel, plastics, aluminium and glass) the production of wood uses little energy. Energy used for material manufacturing is usually sourced from fossil fuels and adds significantly to the embodied carbon in the end product.

Wood and the greenhouse effect

The term "greenhouse effect" refers to the way trapped infrared radiation from the earth is warming the atmosphere. If you’ve walked into a real greenhouse, even on a cold sunny day, you’ll know it feels a lot warmer inside. This is where the name originated.

Solar radiation reaches the Earth through the atmosphere and warms the surface. The stored energy is then sent back to space as infrared radiation. However, as this has a different wavelength to the incoming radiation, less of it can penetrate the barrier of specific atmospheric gases known as greenhouse gases.

The most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2) but others include water vapour (H2O), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).

Since the start of the industrial revolution, there has been a sharp increase in greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, mainly due to CO2, from the burning of fossil fuels, but also from changes in land use. Many scientists agree that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by 30% since the middle of the 19th century.

To tackle climate change we must try to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere - and one way of doing that is to use wood products, such as veneer, which lock away carbon for life.