Inside or outside the home, wood finish materials are a natural choice when it comes to green building.

Inside the Home

A natural environment is a healthy environment. Sustainable, renewable and energy efficient, wood products are ideally suited for interior finish materials. They are 100% natural, can be made and assembled free from toxic products, and offer the warmth and beauty that only wood can provide.

Cabinets

In the kitchen, wood cabinetry is assembled using a variety of green friendly products, including hard and softwood lumber, cabinet grade plywood, particleboard and medium density fiberboard. The same is true for bathroom and other cabinets in the home. Wood cabinets can be stained and clear finished using water-based or low VOC compounds to minimize chemicals used.

Flooring

There are hundreds of wood flooring choices on the market, and the majority are green. Increasingly, pine and other lumber salvaged from old buildings and the bottom of lake beds are being used as flooring, both for their natural beauty and their contribution to green building.

Pre-finished wood floors offer several advantages. Because they're finished offsite, drying and curing takes place before purchase, greatly reducing the home's exposure to chemicals.

When choosing wood flooring, it's important that the material is harvested from sustainable, ethically managed forests.

For more information on wood flooring visit the National Wood Flooring Association.

Trim

When it comes to durability and beauty there is no substitute for wood moulding, wainscoting and paneling. Plastic alternatives are difficult to recycle or otherwise dispose of, and toxic when burned.

Outside the Home

You need only look at the countless homes that have lasted two and three hundred years in the U.S. to understand that wood is a durable and beautiful finishing material. Add renewability, sustainability and the fact that it's natural—and exterior wood finishing materials are a wise green building choice.

Siding

Vinyl siding is a low-cost, durable material, but its manufacture results in harmful byproducts such as dioxin, ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride. It also has additives that cause some industry experts to worry that vinyl siding can outgas, creating unhealthy living conditions. Vinyl siding is also hard to recycle. For these reasons, wood siding is by far the better choice when it comes to green building.

Wood siding requires less energy to manufacture and doesn't release toxic pollutants into the air. It's also renewable and sustainable over the long term. Thanks to new stains and paints that are low in volatile organic compounds (VOC), wood siding can be finished with environmentally friendly products that last for 25 years or more.

There are also composite siding products, such as OSB textured sheet siding and lap siding, soffit and fascia siding products that come with extensive repair and replacement warranties. These products meet green building requirements because they minimize waste by using wood chips and other byproducts of lumber manufacturing.

Decks

Outdoor decks have structural, surface and railing components. Redwood, cedar and pressure treated pine have been used to build the vast majority of decks in North America. In recent years, composite decking surface and rail created from wood waste and recycled polyethylene have been touted as “environmentally friendlier” choices—but this is simply not the case.

These products are made by mixing polyethylene with wood and binding materials, which locks the wood fibers and plastic together. As a result, they can never be recycled and they'll never degrade or decompose. Once they're eventually disposed of, they'll sit in a landfill site for centuries. They also require large amounts of energy to manufacture and transport.

Recently, the treated wood industry voluntarily eliminated the use of wood preservatives containing chromium copper arsenate (CCA) for residential applications. The replacements, such as ammoniated copper quat (ACQ) and other non-arsenated preservatives are much better green building choices and don't present the problems of plastic composite decking materials. Cedar and redwood sourced from sustainably managed forests are also ideal for green building.