For building materials, components and interior design products as well as for public procurement products such as  office furniture,  Paper or bioenergy, the origin is enormously important for the climate and environmental rucksack of the product or for the risk that the product itself endangers the climate and the environment during raw material extraction, transport and production.

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This is explained using selected examples that are important when building and procuring products made of wood. It also shows that and why products made with wood from short distances offer more security with the HOLZ VON HIER (HVH) resp. LOW CARBON TIMBER (LCT) certificate.

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HVH / LCT offers support to municipalities and their planners who want to build or procure with the climate and environmental label HVH / LCT or/and need risk assessments for competing offers.

 

For example, HVH / LCT provides risk assessments, raw material portraits and country portraits for some relevant origins. These portraits can help municipal builders and buyers and their planners to find arguments so that more HVH / LCT can be used. With this you canalso classify raw material origins of other materials (e.g. bauxite for aluminum profiles from Guinea or other).

 

Of course, the same risk requirements as for wood should also apply to other raw materials. So far, however, there are (unfortunately) only real due diligence regulations in Europe for wood, although this would of course be at least as important for other raw material groups, as the raw material and country portraits above show.

 

Just because there are no regulations for other raw material groups does not mean that these are more environmentally friendly than wood when it comes to raw material extraction. Wooden building materials are simply better monitored via environmental labels such as HVH / LCT or FSC, PEFC, Naturland, etc.

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