With more than 200 separate definitions on the internet, "sustainability" must surely be the perfect word for politicians: it can, after all, mean whatever they, or you, want it to mean. Take, for example, the inherent question of embodied energy, ie,the amount of fuel and all other energy consumed in taking a tree from a forest in central Europe, turning it into a timber product and then transporting said product to the UK and thereon to its ultimate destination on a building site in, say, London.Your immediate and obvious response to this might well be that this must be far less sustainable than manufacturing the same product here, but is this actually true? A product that comes from a central European source, such as Munich, is only 200 miles further from London than from Inverness and whilst the former may consume more diesel in transportation, the likelihood is that the various energy costs involved in delivery from forest to sawmill, processing and subsequent manufacture are less with our Austrian, German and Swiss cousins. In part, this can be attributed to local efficiencies when compared to our historical supply chain challenges, but it can also be put down to the fact that the manufacturing plants for products, such as, cross-laminated timber (CLT or cross-lam) are cheek-by-jowl with the sawmill through which the raw material is processed.
展开▼
