From Newfoundland to the Yukon, Canada’s forest sector employs more than 210,000 foresters, scientists, engineers, computer technologists, and tradespeople. About 2 percent of all Canadians live in the 300 communities where most jobs are in the forest sector.
Altogether, the forest industry and forest products contribute 28 billion dollars to Canada’s economy each year. But forest products are not just good for business—they can be good for the environment, too.
Wood Construction
From ancient temples to modern houses, humans have built with wood for thousands of years. Wood construction is environmentally-friendly because:
- Trees capture carbon during their lifespans
- Lumber stores carbon for the lifespan of the building
- It takes 6 to 12 times more fossil fuels to make a steel beam than a wooden one
Despite this, skyscrapers and other large buildings tend to rely on the strength of steel and emissions-heavy concrete. Thanks to innovative new wood products, that’s starting to change. In 2017, the University of British Columbia completed construction on Brock Commons Tallwood House. Eighteen stories high, it houses 400 students and is one of the tallest wood buildings in the world.
Built from cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glued laminated timber (glulam), the structure stores 1753 tonnes of CO2 and avoided 679 tonnes of emissions that would have come from making conventional building materials. That’s equal to the annual emissions of 511 cars.
From Sap to Sugar
About 76 percent of the world’s maple syrup comes from Canadian trees! First Nations peoples taught early settlers how to make it, and it was North America’s standard sweetener until cane sugar arrived in 1875. It takes 40 L of maple sap to make 1 L of maple syrup. To protect the health of their trees, Canadian producers take no more than 1.5 L of sap from each stem in the sugar bush.
Breakthroughs in Bioproducts
Globally, more than 280 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year, almost entirely from fossil fuels. But 90 percent of plastics could be made from renewable, plant-based polymers instead… including those from trees. Packaging is only one example: Henry Ford build a car from soybean plastic in 1941!
Bioplastics and biocomposites can store carbon and reduce emissions, especially if they are made with waste biomass left over from pulp and paper production. And they can be good for your health, as well as for the environment. Human bodies are less likely to reject medical devices made from bioproducts than from petrochemical (fossil-fuel-based) products. Bioproducts may even contribute to the fight against COVID-19: researchers at the University of British Columbia have developed a biodegradable, N95 medical mask made entirely from wood fibres.
