When a timber building product crops up on a high-brow Radio 4 arts show, you know something’s afoot. It was a structural insulated panel (SIPs) and it got a mention on Front Row during a discussion with Dr Peter Bonfield of the BRE about cutting the carbon footprint of housing.

The interview took place at the BRE’s OFFSITE 2007 exhibition and underlined just how mainstream an issue the environmental impact of building has become. As climate change becomes an ever hotter topic, more consumers are demanding houses that waste less material and are more frugal on energy. Meanwhile the government is driving the issue with its Code for Sustainable Homes and its goal of making all new build housing carbon neutral within 10 years.

The big attraction of OFFSITE was “The Big Build”, a showcase for cutting-edge prefab construction comprising six houses and a school. Between them they had the full complement of natural resource-saving technology and materials: ultra-efficient insulation, solar panels, wind turbines – even cladding made from recycled car tyres. One house boasted carbon neutrality already. The others weren’t far off.

Small wonder the media turned up in droves. Radio 4 was joined by most of the main TV channels. You almost had to jostle with the camera crews to get into the houses.

The good news for the timber sector in all this was that wood construction systems and building products were OFFSITE’s star attractions. Four out of six of the houses and the school were timber-based and, of these, most proudly wore the material on their sleeves, inside and out.

Not everyone in the timber trade can capitalise directly on this sort of hi-tech eco housing, but OFFSITE was also a tremendous promotion for wood generally, presenting it as environmentally beneficial, high performance and modern – a material for the future. The event may also help change attitudes in the media. For too long the timber sector’s main press coverage has been in exposés about deforestation. It now has the chance to be billed as a prime material for safeguarding the planet.