Pre-consumer (also called “post-industrial”) recycling refers to the reuse of industrial by-products, as distinguished from material that has been in consumer use. The iron-ore slag used to make mineral wool insulation and the fly ash used to make concrete are examples of post-industrial recycled materials. While post-consumer recycled content is preferable, a product that uses pre-consumer content or recycles a seldom-used waste product, especially in an area where recycled products are hard to find, can be considered green.
Excluded from this category, by FTC definitions, is the use of scrap within the same manufacturing process from which it was generated—material that would typically have gone back into the manufacturing process anyway.
GreenT Plywood
Timber Products, an affiliate of SierraPine, offers no-added-urea-formaldehyde hardwood plywood using their GreenT phenol-formaldehyde resin.
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Third-party forest certification based on standards developed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is the best way to ensure that wood products come from well-managed forests. Wood products must go through a chain-of-custody certification process to carry an FSC stamp.
Manufactured wood products can meet the FSC certification requirements with less than 100% certified wood content through percentage-based claims (30% certified content is required if only virgin wood fiber is used; certified-wood content as low as 17.5% is allowable if the rest of the fiber content is from recycled sources).
With a few special-case exceptions, FSC-based certification is a requirement for GreenSpec inclusion of any nonsalvaged solid-wood product and most other wood products. A few manufactured wood products, including engineered lumber and particleboard/MDF, can be included if they have other environmental advantages--such as absence of formaldehyde binders. Engineered wood products in GreenSpec do not qualify by virtue of their resource efficiency benefits alone (for more on this, see EBN, Vol. 8, No. 11). -
Just how low the VOC level needs to be for a given product to qualify for inclusion in GreenSpec depends on the product category. For most products, we require certification to California’s health-based emissions standard, CDPH Std Method v1.1 standard (also referred to as California Section 01350), which tests a product’s resultant VOC concentrations in the space after a given period of time. For wet-applied products like paints, caulks, and adhesives, we still also look for VOC content instead of, or in addition to, verified low emissions; this is because emissions testing doesn’t adequately test initial offgassing, and VOC content is currently the only widely available proxy.
Timber Products, an affiliate of SierraPine, offers no-added-urea-formaldehyde hardwood plywood using their GreenT phenol-formaldehyde resin. These panels contain 100% pre-consumer recycled and/or recovered wood fiber, as certified by the Composite Panel Association's Environmentally Preferable Product (EPP) standard. Timber Products can provide FSC-certified panels as well. Available in dimensions from 4' x 6' to 4' x 10' and thicknesses ranging from 5/32" to 1-1/4".
06 25 00: Prefinished Paneling
GreenSpec lists here prefinished panels made with recycled content, agricultural waste fiber such as straw, rapidly renewable materials such as bamboo, or FSC-certified wood, that all reduce pressure on forest resources. Some of the products we list also use low-emitting, non-urea-formaldehyde binders.
06 40 23: Interior Architectural Woodwork Substrate
Medium-density fiberboard (MDF) and particleboard are manufactured from sawmill waste that is typically held together with urea-formaldehyde (UF) or phenol-formaldehyde (PF) binder. Particleboard is made from larger wood fiber particles than MDF, has a lower density, and doesn't mill as cleanly.
Most manufacturers offer MDF and particleboard with UF and PF options, but formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen, offgases from UF products significantly more than those that use PF. These emissions are regulated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which established formaldehyde emissions limits of 0.09 and 0.11 parts per million for MDF and particleboard, respectively, in January 2011.
Products listed in GreenSpec contain no-added-urea-formaldehyde (NAUF) or no-added-formaldehyde (NAF) and are CARB Phase 2 compliant; they may also contain FSC-certified wood content or recovered waste fiber.
Certifications
LEED Credits
EQc4.4: Low-Emitting Materials—Composite Wood&Agrifiber Products
IEQc4.4: Low-Emitting Materials—Composite Wood and Agrifiber Products
MRc4: Recycled Content
MRc6: Certified Wood
MRc7: Certified Wood
Ratings and Commentary
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Manufacturer Information
Timber Products Company
P.O. Box 269
Springfield, OR
Toll-Free: 800-547-9520
www.timberproducts.com
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