Holz und Holzprodukte in vergleichenden Ökobilanzen

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aspire to quantify the potential environmental impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle. The technique is used to identify and realize opportunities to improve the environmental aspects of processes, and to compare between products with equivalent function and performance in order to select the environmentally best ones. Especially when the intended application is a comparative assertion, it is inevitable that the key features and methodological framework currently discussed in ISO be accepted and applied to fulfill the specific requirements of transparency, completeness, reproducibility, reliability, and consistency. Because construction affects our environment to a significant extent, building materials and products have been evaluated in LCA studies for several years. In this context, wood and timber based products do have an exceptional position, in that they are produced from a resource which itself is an integral part of the forest ecosystem. It has not yet been possible to quantify the environmental benefits of sustainable forestry to such an extent that they can be used in LCA to underline the environmental benefits of wood with CO₂-storage being the exception to the rule. Nevertheless, the examples selected from applications in building construction and power supply lines manifest that timber derived products have an excellent environmental position when compared to alternative products. This is mainly due to the sparing use of fossile energy resources, low contribution to the greenhouse effect, and small waste volume.