It's been echoed time and time again that wood is a sustainable material choice, but how true is that assertion really? We, at VonWood, decided to put that claim to the test. We took a deep dive into our company's carbon footprint to truly understand the environmental impact of our operations and, as you may have guessed, we were quite pleasantly surprised.
Our current calculations reveal that VonWood's business impact is about 3533 tonnes CO2e carbon negative for the last period! Just to clarify, a negative carbon footprint is a good thing – it means our business activities contribute to absorbing more CO2e than we emit. To put that in perspective, that's the equivalent of emissions produced by 786 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for an entire year, or the amount of CO2e emitted by charging 429,763,469 phones.
Carbon Footprint Calculation
The calculation was divided into two parts: the emissions caused by our office and employees, and the emissions caused by our orders.
Office and Employee Emissions
Without any in-house production, our office emissions are pretty minimal. Using emission factors from the company Normative, our estimates are based on our expenditure in relevant areas. It turns out we emit around 28.6 tonnes CO2e yearly.
Emissions from Orders
The majority of our emissions happen outside of our direct control, primarily in the production and transport of the products we buy and sell. By taking a cradle-to-gate approach, we've accounted for the manufacturing and transport of our products. After several assumptions, we concluded that 1 m3 of wood product absorbs 950 kgCO2e, including all stages from growth to delivery. And transportation per km per tonne emits 0.057 kgCO2e.
“As a result, our orders have a negative balance of 3562 tonnes CO2e for the past period." David de Jong
Assumptions and Limitations
Though the final numbers give us a rough estimate, they're based on several assumptions, and not all the data may be entirely accurate. However, our method is comparable to those used as a standard by many corporations for carbon accounting, even with the generalizations.
Transport emissions were based on baseline emissions from trucks in Europe, while product emissions were derived from a set of Environmental Product Declarations for products similar to what we sell.
How can we use this information?
In conclusion, these findings have reinforced the narrative we've held onto - wood truly is a sustainable material choice. The numbers speak for themselves and we're proud to say that our operations at VonWood are contributing to a greener and healthier planet.
Also we want to stress that it's more about the overal impact of using wood as a building material and how all the links in the supply chain can contribute together, by keeping their emissions as low as possible while promoting a carbon negative product. This way we do not only share the burden, but we can also claim the benefits together.
Stay tuned as we continue to monitor and improve our sustainable practices. Together, we can make a difference. Here’s to a greener future, one wooden product at a time!
For more information, please feel free to contact us at info@vonwood.com
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