The environmental and social impacts of modified wood production: effect of timber sourcing

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This study assesses the environmental and social impacts of a modified softwood produced using radiata pine sourced from New Zealand or Chile. The LCA found that differing forestry and transport burdens associated with each location broadly cancelled each other out, giving overall product footprints that were very similar. Boiler gas and phenol-formaldehyde resin were the biggest emitters of GHG emissions, and normalization highlighted toxicity impacts as significant, largely due to the resin input. SLCA hotspots analyses suggest that the forestry sector in Chile has more potential social risks than the equivalent sector in New Zealand. However, each sector scored poorly in different social aspects making it difficult to recommend a sector without introducing subjective judgements. Combining LCA with SLCA is still novel, but this study found it added useful insights into a broader range of impacts associated with sustainable production, especially given the similarity of the environmental LCA results taken alone.

Keywords

  • LCA, GHG emissions, SLCA, social lifecycle assessment, social hotspot, wood modification, envrionmental impacts, social indicators
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)236-254
Number of pages19
JournalInternational Wood Products Journal
Volume13
Issue number4
Early online date16 Sept 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Oct 2022

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