Our forests are under increasing pressure to supply materials for a growing population. What would you rather have – healthy forests or poorly built, oversized, inefficient, wasteful housing?
Time is running out for our remaining forests and so we need to look more closely at options that use less wood, and then, as a society move toward best practices.
Options:
– Building systems that use less wood: earthbag, strawbale, adobe, etc.
– Recycled wood, including pallets (example: pallet trusses)
– Small diameter wood thinned from overcrowded forests, which can be used for a wide range of uses such as roundwood trusses
– Woodless construction methods: earthbag domes, adobe domes and vaults, low-fired clay brick, ferrocement, recycled plastic trash houses, nylon cement (recycled fishing net and cement), shipping containers, bamboo, rubble houses, load-bearing strawbale, stone
Photo credits: Tongass National Forest, Tract housing in Las Vegas
I sometimes wonder if the people of Easter Island asked themselves this very question.
I imagine some did, but they probably got outvoted by the masses.