19 February 2013

How do you like wood?

| johnboy
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wood

Planet Ark are launching a campaign to get people to use more wood in their homes.

But they’re mashing up our own Parliament House to do so, hence the local interest.

It’s Parliament House as you’ve never seen it. In a striking digital makeover, the external concrete masonry has been replaced by more environmentally-friendly wood panelling.

The creative transformation is part of an awareness campaign by Planet Ark to encourage Australians to live in more sustainable homes by building with responsibly sourced wood.

According to recent research, an overwhelming 89% of people love the look of wood in their homes, buildings, furniture and flooring, but many are still unaware of the environmental benefits of using responsibly sourced wood.

There is a popular perception that cutting trees down is bad for the environment and this is true for high conservation value forests – those harbouring rare and endangered plants and animals, which need to be preserved and protected. However, recycled timber and wood sourced from responsibly managed plantations and forests act as carbon stores. As the trees grow, they take carbon out of the atmosphere, which then remains trapped in the wood after harvesting.

Approximately 50% of the dry weight of wood is stored carbon, so if Parliament House had been built from wood, the carbon would have been stored since its construction in 1988.

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Don’t the the desgin integrity guys at APH see that, they will freak, it’s not part of the original vision for the building!

poetix said :

Solidarity said :

Looks like a boarded up shop front but with the grain of the timber totally wrong.

There is a difference between being able to use photoshop, and being able to use photoshop well.

I appreciate the slightly Edwardian syntax being applied to this awfully post-modern post.

You look too closely into the things you read.

ToastFliesRED2:27 pm 20 Feb 13

How do I like wood? Well done under a prefectly rare steak

Solidarity said :

Looks like a boarded up shop front but with the grain of the timber totally wrong.

There is a difference between being able to use photoshop, and being able to use photoshop well.

I appreciate the slightly Edwardian syntax being applied to this awfully post-modern post.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

Man got excited and though johnboy was finally gonna post the pic of my erect donger I sent him the first time he moderated me…alas it was just a silly advertisement

Thank God for censorship. 🙂

And yes, that is one of the crappest pieces of digital photo manipulation I’ve ever seen.

Grail said :

cross said :

So let me get this straight it’s good for the environment to use “dead trees ” as long as don’t print on it,like say a newspaper or God forbid ,advertising.

It’s fine to use dead trees as long as those trees were plantation grown for the purpose, as opposed to being the result of chopping down forests and jungles which are part of established ecosystems.

The catch is that most people don’t want to wait 25 years for a decent hardwood plantation to mature, and they don’t want to use pine for everything.

The other key difference is that if you turn a tree in to a newspaper, it ends up in a landfill a week later rotting and releasing carbon back in to the atmosphere (admittedly somewhat longer than a week if you recycle it a few times).

If you turn that tree in to a house, then potentially it’s storing carbon out of the atmosphere for maybe 50 years, longer if you don’t knock it down after 50 years or you recycle the materials in it when you do.

Looks like a boarded up shop front but with the grain of the timber totally wrong.

There is a difference between being able to use photoshop, and being able to use photoshop well.

cross said :

So let me get this straight it’s good for the environment to use “dead trees ” as long as don’t print on it,like say a newspaper or God forbid ,advertising.

It’s fine to use dead trees as long as those trees were plantation grown for the purpose, as opposed to being the result of chopping down forests and jungles which are part of established ecosystems.

The catch is that most people don’t want to wait 25 years for a decent hardwood plantation to mature, and they don’t want to use pine for everything.

So let me get this straight it’s good for the environment to use “dead trees ” as long as don’t print on it,like say a newspaper or God forbid ,advertising.

RedDogInCan said :

thatsnotme said :

If they want people to consider wood, could they maybe have chosen a digital manipulation that didn’t make Parliament House look like it’d been rendered with plywood??

The Sydney Opera House, one of the world’s architectual marvels, is made of mostly of plywood.

Nothing wrong with ply as a building material, but I’m pretty sure if the Sydney Opera House’s world famous sails were finished with a plywood exterior, they’d not be world famous – at least not for the right reasons.

Really though, the digital manipulation they’ve done doesn’t do any favours for wood as a building material, especially when used as a visible element. Their representation of parliament house involves taking a single picture of some wood – presumably ply – and overlaying the facade. So the grain from the front of the building continues uninterrupted on walls that sit a good 10-20 metres behind.

Although, I’ve just looked at the rest of the photos they’ve got of buildings photoshopped so they look like they’re made of wood, and I’m pretty sure they’ve used the same wood sample to create every photo. Parliament House actually stacks up pretty well compared to their representation of the Gold Coast being made from wood – high rise towers and all.

How do you like wood?

I tried that line during a candle-lit session of Catan once or twice.

thatsnotme said :

If they want people to consider wood, could they maybe have chosen a digital manipulation that didn’t make Parliament House look like it’d been rendered with plywood??

The Sydney Opera House, one of the world’s architectual marvels, is made of mostly of plywood.

smashedcrab said :

Try going to Thor’s Hammer in Yarralumlah for quality reclaimed timber.

Don’t forget to take your first born and your left nut.

They could have done a better job on their digital render. That looks horrid. Doesn’t really help the cause.

Storing carbon to kill the plants.. what a smart idea

c_c™ said :

Masquara said :

c_c™ said :

… plantation timber … made in Vietnam …

Yeah roight.

Illegal wood production in Vietnam is quite a bit lower than most other Asian countries, and lower than some Eastern European countries.

That is saying pretty much nothing!

Masquara said :

c_c™ said :

… plantation timber … made in Vietnam …

Yeah roight.

Illegal wood production in Vietnam is quite a bit lower than most other Asian countries, and lower than some Eastern European countries.

If they want people to consider wood, could they maybe have chosen a digital manipulation that didn’t make Parliament House look like it’d been rendered with plywood??

c_c™ said :

… plantation timber … made in Vietnam …

Yeah roight.

I love my wood fire.

I highly recommend visiting the Greenpeace Good Wood website before buying wood from Bunnings et al.
http://www.goodwoodguide.org.au

For instance, Merbau, which is a very common decking wood is one of the finer woods sold in large quantites, but is sourced from Indonesia where deforestation is (despite ‘government approved’) fairly bad.

Pine is usually fine.

Try going to Thor’s Hammer in Yarralumlah for quality reclaimed timber.

Just about every alternative to wood is cheaper and looks good too. I’ll take the cheaper (but still expensive) option.

Holden Caulfield said :

c_c™ said :

…What you don’t want are people racing out buying the cheap crap that isn’t sustainably sourced, or is treated with old fashioned, environmentally unfriendly methods…

Yeah, that’s probably why Planet Ark said this:

There is a popular perception that cutting trees down is bad for the environment and this is true for high conservation value forests – those harbouring rare and endangered plants and animals, which need to be preserved and protected. However, recycled timber and wood sourced from responsibly managed plantations and forests act as carbon stores. As the trees grow, they take carbon out of the atmosphere, which then remains trapped in the wood after harvesting.

You can read it above in the stuff JB quoted.

I can read FFS. Does the average consumer know how to spot genuinely sustainable wood products?
Freedom furniture was in trouble a while back for flogging fake sustainable timber blinds.
When you create demand, you create an opportunity for consumer error, and for sly operators to cash in. It takes more than a line in a press release to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Planet Ark can Photoshop? Wow that’s me told then. I shall rush out and burn all my mahogany fittings immediately.

Holden Caulfield5:00 pm 19 Feb 13

c_c™ said :

…What you don’t want are people racing out buying the cheap crap that isn’t sustainably sourced, or is treated with old fashioned, environmentally unfriendly methods…

Yeah, that’s probably why Planet Ark said this:

There is a popular perception that cutting trees down is bad for the environment and this is true for high conservation value forests – those harbouring rare and endangered plants and animals, which need to be preserved and protected. However, recycled timber and wood sourced from responsibly managed plantations and forests act as carbon stores. As the trees grow, they take carbon out of the atmosphere, which then remains trapped in the wood after harvesting.

You can read it above in the stuff JB quoted.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd4:53 pm 19 Feb 13

Man got excited and though johnboy was finally gonna post the pic of my erect donger I sent him the first time he moderated me…alas it was just a silly advertisement

They have to be careful how they do this, they need to make sure people are using the right type of wood. Bunnings for example has absolutely beautiful internal wood, intended for bench tops and decorative work. Really good quality, plantation timber, naturally treated with oil, made in Vietnam by a European company.

What you don’t want are people racing out buying the cheap crap that isn’t sustainably sourced, or is treated with old fashioned, environmentally unfriendly methods.

It’s a bit like the CFL globes. Done right, new globe technologies can make a good difference. But for the moment, I suspect they’re an environmental time bomb that was rushed out and ill thought. This could be the same.

I call troll on Planet Ark.

I, for one, welcome our new termite overlords.

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