Manifestly good sense

The UK government says it wants to be green. And it wants to be seen to be green. So it’s obvious. It should adopt the new Timber Manifesto pronto.

Launched this week at Timber Expo, the Timber Manifesto has been produced under the auspices of the Wood for Good Campaign and is backed by all the key UK timber industry organisations, plus the Swedish Forest Industries Federation.

It lays out the significant social and economic benefits of wood and forestry to the UK, but chiefly the contribution it can make to the country’s overall eco-performance. And it concludes with a seven step programme for government to capitalise on this. The latter is very straightforward, and the only marginal pain for the Treasury comes in step 1, which calls for VAT on sustainable timber products to be trimmed to 10%. But that would be a price worth paying for the upturn in use of wood in construction and the associated shrinkage of the building sector’s carbon footprint, with the consequent cost benefits that brings.

Step 2 is for the government to get its head properly around the green case for timber and publicly endorse it and the industry producing, processing and using it.

Step 3 is for ministers to establish a Wood First rule, making timber the “primary building material’ for public projects. That results in green, carbon emission cutting points during construction, plus energy savings in the completed buildings, given that timber-based construction is, by and large, the best insulated and most energy frugal.Ultimately this could also lead to Building Regulations insisting on a level of timber use in all construction. The French have had something similar in place for a while, which they call the Plan Bois Construction Environnement (well, they would, wouldn’t they?), This stipulates a specific volume per m2 of building. If they can do it, why can’t we?

Step 4 is the introduction of consistent measures for building products’ life cycle and embodied carbon assessments. That way the environmental merits of all products can be compared like for like and timber can compete with the others on a level playing field. And may the greenest win.

Step 5 is more help for supplier countries in the developing world to develop sustainable forest management and timber production and stamp out illegal logging. That makes obvious sense and would make the politicians look and feel good.

Step 6 is backing for forestry and increased tree cover at home. Again indubitably good environmental sense and, with greater opportunity to trip through endless acres of woodland, makes everyone feel good.

Finally Step 7 is to help the UK timber industry recover, recycle and reuse more post consumer waste wood.The result of that is that we dump less in the landfill sites we’re rapidly running out of and the timber sector makes even better use of its raw material resource.

In short, the government should manifestly incorporate the Timber Manifesto into its own.