Building sustainable products and supporting local communities

By Emma Peterson. 

Learn how sustainability does more than help nature, it helps people. 

As climate becomes an increasingly pressing issue, the industry has experienced a distinct shift towards creating more sustainable processes and products. This is due to many factors but includes tax incentives from the government and consumers shifting priorities. As Heidi J. Ellsworth explained, “Millennials are the largest homeowners in the country, but Gen Z is right behind them and they care a lot about sustainability.” To dive deeper into this topic, she sat down with Kris Gray, LP Building Solutions’ resource manager, for a Read Listen Watch® (RLW) webinar. 

One of the things that Kris highlighted in their conversation was LP SmartSide Trim and Siding. This siding is made of wood that is sourced under LP’s sustainable forestry initiative (SFI). Kris explained, “This is a third-party certifier. So, when we buy our wood, we make sure we buy under that forest certification standard.” By sourcing fiber from companies certified to this standard, LP knows that everything from water quality to forest management and endangered species zones are being accounted for in the logging process. To address concerns of longevity and lifespan of an all-wood product, LP uses zinc borate, which is a water soluble, inert chemical. Kris shared a bit about how this works, saying, “As it rains and everything else, some zinc borate drips off with every drop of water. But there's enough in here that after 50 years, there's still enough zinc borate that it's rot resistant.” 

In addition to the SFI and the zinc, LP has done lifecycle assessments of SmartSide Trim and Siding and found that it is carbon negative. Kris explained, “All the carbon that is burned in the process of harvesting wood, getting the wood to the mill, processing it into siding and then transporting it to the final customer, is offset by the amount of carbon stored in those products.” Instead of harvesting wood or fossil fuels (releasing carbon) to develop a product, LP uses the wood directly, which holds carbon.  

Beyond the sustainability of these practices, LP is also helping strengthen the communities around them. Kris explained, "Here in the lake states, loggers pay for the wood and the landowner gets paid for their stumpage or their standing trees... Then the landowner can use the proceeds from their timber sale to put back into their lands.” For smaller, non-industrial landowners this reinvestment often looks like improvement of roads and trails, the diversifying of the habitat on their land and the replanting of trees. This is similar for the larger, federal and state landowners, but they also often spend that money on improving access to public lands for people (for things like hunting, fishing and hiking). This system is considered sustainable forest management. For customers who buy SmartSide Trim and Siding they are “supporting a whole chain that feeds back literally to the ground that the tree was grown on and supports the communities around that land.” 

Read the transcript, Listen to the recording or Watch the full webinar to learn more about sustainable initiatives and options in the industry.