Although promoted as an environmentally preferable material, and classified as such in several green building programs, the production and use of steel framing results in a number of adverse environmental impacts that greatly exceed the impacts of available renewable alternatives such as wood. Even when considering steel framing that contains recycled content as high as 35 percent, considerable energy is consumed in the production process and places steel products near the top of any embodied energy ranking of construction materials. The bottom line of this analysis is that it is rarely appropriate to characterize steel as the more environmentally benign material when compared to wood.

News notes are courtesy of Southern Forests Network News Notes
www.southernsustainableforests.org