Sustainable Wood | Sustainable Hardwood | Eco Friendly Wood

We have compiled a series of league tables to help compare and rate the properties of wood. All of our assessments are based on kiln dried timber (with the exception of the Green Oak and the Season Oak) starting from sawn, square edged boards.

These tables can be beneficial when attempting to choose a wood for a particular application. Here we look at the sustainability of timbers widely available here in the UK. These are timbers we offer on our website, available for a wide range of products.

To make this assessment we have considered a number of factors; firstly we gave each timber a rating in terms of its impact to the environment when forested and transported for commercial use.

We used a number of sources including www.cites.org and www.iucnredlist.org to assess the international view on the species. Plus we used our experience and knowledge of sourcing these timbers for some years in the joinery industry.  We then added a rating based on its availability in the UK. Although this could have skewed the results slightly (as demand may influence this rather than its environmental credibility) we looked at the top distributors in the UK, as they all conform to strict environmental laws - if they didn’t stock it this reduced the score. This did actually seem to reflect the results from the other studies.  These combined factors enabled us to rate the timbers and display in this league table:

To download this table in as a PDF please click here.

Please note that this is only our opinion of the sustainability of the timbers shown and is to be used only as a guide. As improvements are made forestry and with regulations, these results will change over time. Our table was last updated in early 2015.

In fact; some of our suppliers, have a slightly different view to some of these results.

For more information please refer to www.trada.co.uk or the websites shown above - www.cites.org and www.iucnredlist.org.

For more about our sustainability policy please click here or for more about our consideration for the environment click here.

For more on what timber is best for which applications please do not hesitate to contact us – info@wooduchoose.com  

Video Transcript:

Sustainable Timber Ratings

Here we look at the sustainability of timbers widely available in the UK.

To make this assessment we have considered a number of factors - firstly we gave each timber a rating in terms of its impact to the environment when forested and transported for commercial use.

We used a number of sources including www.cites.org and www.iucnredlist.org to assess the international view on the species.

We then added a rating based on its availability in the UK.

These combined factors enabled us to rate the timbers and display in a league table

See the full table in our blog

As improvements are made forestry and with regulations, these results will change over time.

For more information please refer to www.trada.co.uk www.cites.org and www.iucnredlist.org.