Engineers Seek More Sustainable Building Material
Posted By: Jamie  on 02/20/2007
A group of engineers are demonstrating how new “biocomposite” materials could cycle through landfills much more quickly than wood, minimizing waste, providing energy, preserving perhaps thousands of acres of trees, and maybe even helping slow climate change.

Housing has a huge environmental impact. In 2005, U.S. homebuilders used an all-time high 27.6 billion board feet (165.6 million cubic meters) of lumber for residential construction, according to the Western Wood Products Association. Overseas demand is significant as well. In fact, an estimated 500 million people around the world lack adequate housing. Meanwhile, wood makes up a quarter of all debris from construction and demolition, accounting for 35.1 million tons in 1998, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

When lumber and plywood go to the landfill, they biodegrade in an anaerobic process that emits methane. Biocomposites, by contrast, degrade much faster than wood and could therefore make recapturing methane a profitable energy practice. Alternatively, because methane can be used to make the resin that is used in the biocomposites, much of the material’s mass could be chemically recycled into new biocomposite materials of similarly high quality.

Read Exducos' article Wasted Wood: Engineers seek a more Sustainable Building Material

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