Let Us Build It Better with Wood

As manufacturers of award-winning orangeries and garden rooms, alongside our quality wood windows, we’re very proud to have recently joined the British Woodworking Federation (BWF) and their sister organisation, the Wood Windows Alliance (WWA).

Whilst joining a trade body might not be headline news for everyone(!), we’re pleased to be part of an association that is promoting the use of timber as a building material.

The Government’s ‘Clean Growth Strategy,’ which was published last year, encourages the use of timber as a building material as part of our need to de-carbonise our economy – so this initiative is of national importance.

It is a common assumption that cutting trees down for use in construction is bad for the environment.  However, if the timber comes from sustainable resources – as is the case with all of our manufacturing here at David Salisbury – then the impact is positive for the environment. This is because carbon stays locked within the harvested tree which, when added to the planting of new young trees, produces a net gain.

Here’s an interesting fact for the weekend: approximately a ton of carbon is stored in every metre cubed of wood.

Last month the BWF launched their ‘Build It Better with Wood’ campaign, which we are firmly endorsing here at David Salisbury. The overall aim of this campaign is to make wood the first-choice material in any build. 

Every single one of our orangeries, conservatories, garden rooms and wooden windows are manufactured from quality, sustainable timber. We have always been a business with environmental concerns at the heart of what we do. Our early adoption of solar power for our factory, through to our biomass heating system which results in zero wood waste at the end of our manufacturing process, are just some examples of the green initiatives that we have and continue to undertake.

We’re now looking forward to working with the WWA in promoting the benefits that timber windows can bring, relative to the widely-used UPVC. We’ll talk about these in more detail in a future Blog but for now the current focus on plastic, which the BBC’s recent Blue Planet documentary has done so much to bring to our attention, means we’re fascinated in some of the great facts that the WWA are promoting about timber windows.

Did you know 160kg of carbon is saved in every wood window chosen instead of UPVC? Or just 15% of old UPVC windows were recycled in the UK in 2013? 

Just some of the many reasons why we’ll certainly continue to support the ‘Build It Better With Wood’ campaign.