Environmentally Friendly Wood For Your Home

Photo Credit: Some Rights Reserved by Thomas Heylen via Flickr.

If you’re a home improvement enthusiast and want to make sure that you have a green and eco-friendly home, then it’s a good idea to know what types of wood are eco-friendly as well as available for your home improvement projects. As I’m one such enthusiast, I’ve looked into the matter and have created a guide to environmentally friendly woods for your home.

Sea Grass
Sea grass is renowned for its benefits to the environment. Known as the ‘ecosystem engineer’, sea grass not only assists in the creation of eco-systems, but also stabilizes the seabed, protects against coastal erosion, and is very adaptable to changes in its surroundings. It’s a tough and versatile resource out of which luxurious wicker furniture and home accessories such as rugs can be created. Another plus point to using sea grass within your home improvement projects is that it is naturally stain resistant.

Phoenix Wood
Phoenix Wood, which is officially referred to as Paulownia, is a great and eco-friendly wood resource due to its fast growth rate. It is a hard wood and thereby suitable for chests, crates, decorative boxes and even flooring. It gets its colloquial name from its characteristic during harvest. After a Paulownia is harvested, a new plant quickly grows from the roots of the old plant, hence the idea of the new rising from the ashes (or harvested plant) of the old.

Bamboo
I’m sure you’ve been expecting this wood type, and rightly so, as bamboo is an ideal resource. It has a record breaking growth rate often reaching its full height within one growth season. It therefore doesn’t require pesticides to protect it; but it is also a very strong material with multiple uses. In the west, we use it for items within home improvement such as wooden shutters, but in the east it is also used as a material within the construction industry as for example scaffolding.

Abaca
Abaca is one of the lesser known wood types, and most commonly used to create paper, envelopes and canvases, although it can be used to create rugs, fans and even fabrics for clothes or curtains. Abaca belongs to the banana family, but unlike its counterpart, it is an inedible version. Similar to bamboo, abaca has a high growth rate, and when it is harvested the entire plant can be used to create material and resources.

Whenever you are buying wood, no matter the type, look out for FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certificate. The FSC ensures that the wood has been harvested ethically meaning that new trees replace those that are harvested, damage to the forestation is avoided as much as possible during a harvest, and all traders receive their fair share of the profits.

This article was written by Sarah Oxley on behalf of Shutters Direct providers of quality and eco-friendly wooden shutters. Sarah is a home improvement enthusiast who is always on the lookout for the greener alternative of home décor trends.

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