Engineered wood: The good, the bad and the ugly

The most environmentally responsible way to build with wood is to use as little of it as possible. While wood is technically a renewable resource, it is a dwindling one, as most solid wood is logged from old growth forests, which have been over-harvested for quite some time.

That being said, there are a number of ways to use wood responsibly in your building projects. First, always insist that the wood products you buy are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

Second, when appropriate, you can use engineered wood such as oriented strand board (OSB), particle board and hardboard. Here are a few interesting facts:

• OSB is made out of little pieces of wood from small fast-growing trees (usually from a tree farm) so that there is no impact on older trees.
• Seventy-five percent of the particle board manufactured in Canada and the U.S. is made entirely from recycled materials. The remaining twenty-five percent of boards are made partially from recycled material and partially from new wood. Even the mixed panels have an average recycled content of 66 percent, which is highly prefferable to solid wood which, obviously, has no recycled content.
• Hardboard is the hardest and most dense of the engineered woods, because it is made of highly compressed, exploded wood fibers.

While engineered wood is a nice choice because of how it minimizes the impact on old-growth forests, there are some things to watch out for ...

Engineered wood necessitates the use of adhesives (to bond the wood chips into solid pieces), which are often made with urea formaldehyde resin, a toxin that off-gases into the environment causing sinus troubles, anxiety and migraines, among other unsavory ailments. Luckily, you can now buy formaldehyde-free engineered wood. Or, if it's not available in your area, non-toxic sealers are available, that can seal in the out-gasing. Another solution is to look for engineered woods that are manufactured using phenol-formaldehyde resin, which presents little to no off-gasing issues.

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