Stop Making Sustainability So Complicated
Stop Making Sustainability So Complicated
Which is clearer?
Climate Positive means the same thing as carbon negative. It’s being used more and more across multiple industries because it’s a simple concept to grasp and sounds better than carbon negative.
The word negative is, well, negative. It sounds like it might be… bad. Everyone is consuming information a mile a minute, and now we have AI writing a lot of our content for us (not this, though). So when we’re talking about an important concept that we want massive amounts of people to grasp quickly and easily, we want to phrase it in a way that causes less confusion about what it means, or whether it’s good or bad.
Climate Positive NOW is a category of building materials that are already climate positive.
That means they sequester more carbon than was released in their production and use—from resource extraction, to manufacture, all the way through installation. And they won’t re-release that CO2 back into the atmosphere until they burn or decompose. Hint: these building materials are all wood-based.
Wood is a renewable resource, and it’s climate positive. Engineered wood uses wood fiber more efficiently—often saving leftover fiber that was once left on the forest floor to rot. And because it’s dense, engineered composite wood sequesters even more carbon than the same volume of solid wood. Durable, decorative surfaces can extend the life of composite wood panels used in cabinets, flooring, and furniture.
Climate Positive NOW is also a call to action!
We’re in the midst of a climate crisis. Buildings are responsible for 39% percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—the single highest emitter—worse than the U.S. and China combined. Interiors, with their renovations over the life of the building, are as culpable as the structure and envelope. If we can reduce the embodied carbon* of buildings by using more sustainable materials in our buildings, then we should do that!
As it grows in use in the marketplace, climate positive is a description that could, unfortunately, be misused for greenwashing. But any term can be used to greenwash—if you’re lying. When it comes to the carbon-sequestering properties of wood, they’re backed by science. Still, we don’t need to use scientific charts and jargon to explain this—especially if we want this knowledge to penetrate all the way to the consumer level, where we really can make an even bigger difference in our future quality of life through better material choices.
“Climate Positive NOW” is easy to understand, and we should be saying it every time we talk about wood-based materials!
*Embodied carbon is another confusing term that sounds like it might stand for how much carbon a thing is holding or storing. Instead, it means how much CO2 (or its equivalent) was released into the atmosphere as a result of producing the thing, from resource extraction to manufacturing, shipping, and even installation, in the case of the built environment.
Want definitions for more confusing terms? Check out our partial glossary of carbon and climate terms.
Developed by Material Intelligence, ClimatePositiveNOW.org is a sustainable materials education project inspired by a combination of Kenn Busch’s research into the properties of wood-based architectural materials, and his two decades of experience delivering educational content to interior designers and architects.