This month I will be doing a presentation at the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Annual Conference regarding the affect certified wood has on the architectural woodwork industry. SFI is one of over 40 forest certification systems worldwide and is accepted by most sustainable building certification systems. This includes the National Association of Home Builders National Green Building Standard, Green Globes — originally developed in Canada and now in the United States — and Breeam, which is the worlds leading design and assessment method for sustainable buildings, but not accepted in the LEED program.
They have asked me to address several issues, but the most pertinent is the following. Why would it be important for LEED to open up to other forest certification programs? The LEED program, since its inception, has only allowed Forest Stewardship Council certified wood which has narrowed down the ability for an architectural woodworker to find material that will meet these requirements as well as the project specifications.
Most architectural woodworkers use “AA” or “A” grade of veneer on there projects. In a typical forest (certified or not) we would be lucky to develop 3 to 6 percent of the forest that would meet the requirements for “AA” grade of veneer. Now, when we limit our supply to only FSC materials which is approximately 2 percent of the world’s forests, we are looking at a relatively small amount of veneer to select from.
This is tough enough but back in July 2010 LEED version 2009 v3 changed the rules and now require that all wood parts of a unit must be FSC-certified to apply for the certified wood credit. They used a door as an example and said that unless all of the wood components that make up a door are FSC certified, then none of the components will count toward this credit, no partial credits. This, I believe, will backfire on USGBC because now unless you can get all of the wood components to make a cabinet as FSC certified, woodworkers will not use any FSC products to manufacture that cabinet.
It is very hard to determine whether LEED will open the certified wood credit to include other forest certification systems especially due to recent developments. On June 15, 2011 they established a LEED pilot credit which does open up the potential for multiple forest certification systems; however, in August 2011 during the second open comment period for LEED 2012 it allows for FSC pure only. This seems to be a mixed message.
The Architectural Woodwork Institute has a statement of Environmental Sustainability and Green Certification which is available on its website at
www.awinet.org. To paraphrase the statement, AWI recognizes all programs that verify sustainable forestry and wood use practices but does not endorse any single program.
In closing, if the LEED program insists on requiring wood to be certified while other products such as steel and concrete are referred to as “Green,” then they should open up and allow all forest certification systems.