Panels & Furniture Asia March/April 2024

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ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT Calculating carbon storage in wooden furniture The Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) has launched an online calculator to calculate the carbon storage of wooden furniture. How does it work, and how is it part of the bigger picture of lowering global carbon footprint? By Yap Shi Quan Sustainability is no longer a trend now. It would not be farfetched to say that the global mindset has shifted to sustainability becoming a responsibility. It is a necessary requirement in trade, and consumers have become more and more conscious of the carbon footprint of the products they buy. How can businesses start to be more mindful of carbon footprint? One way is by understanding and monitoring the carbon storage of products they produce. Whatever material it is made with, every furniture item inherently stores carbon. The more carbon it stores and the longer the furniture item stores it, the better; the goal is to not release the carbon into the atmosphere. CALCULATING CARBON STORAGE IN FURNITURE To encourage wooden furniture manufacturers and consumers to learn more about carbon storage, the PEFC has released an online calculator that estimates how much carbon a wooden furniture contains — not including the non-wooden parts, which the calculator cannot calculate. 1 16 PANELS & FURNITURE ASIA | MARCH / APRIL <strong>2024</strong>
ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT Fig. 1 Calculating the carbon storage is simple with PEFC’s calculator. There are two ways to go about it, as shown in Fig. 1: The first way is to measure the length, width and thickness of the furniture. This probably has to be done multiple times for the various parts of a furniture item, since different parts have different measurements and might be made of different materials. The second way is to determine the volume of the furniture item. This is more for irregularly shaped furniture. Other values that need to be keyed in include the material type and the wood density. The material is subcategorised to solid wood, plywood, particleboard, oriented strand board (OSB), medium- or high-density fibreboard (MDF or HDF). For wood density, the PEFC has provided a reference list, but they encourage manufacturers or consumers to check the data sheet that wood suppliers provide, that should contain the density information of the wood. Otherwise, manufacturers or consumers can calculate the density themselves. Also, in general, the higher the density, the higher the amount of carbon stored in the wood. HOW DOES IT WORK? There is a specific formula to calculate the carbon stored in wooden furniture. This formula is the basis behind PEFC’s calculator, with some preset values. The carbon stored in wood (CO2 in kilograms) is equivalent to the multiplication of the fraction of carbon in the wood (f c), the weight of a carbon atom in a CO2 molecule (3.67) and the total weight of oven-dry wood, as seen in Fig. 2. The weight of oven-dry wood can be calculated using the values of the wood density (kg/m 3 ), the volume of wood (m 3 ), the moisture of wood content in percentage (u/100), and the fraction of wood in the wood-based product (f w). Although the calculator uses preset values, which might lower the accuracy, the results obtained from the calculator are still reliable, according to PEFC. They have determined 0.5 to be the carbon fraction in wood as an average for the calculator. There are more detailed values based on the wood species and provenance, which can be found online. The fraction of wood in solid wood products is 1, while other products made with, for example, MDF or OSB varies because of the presence of glue and depending on the manufacturing process. Estimates are incorporated into the online calculator. Moisture content in solid wood is roughly 12%, and 10% for engineered wood products; although in theory, the moisture content varies according to the humidity in the air, geographical location, seasons, building type, and more. Water does not contain carbon, and hence has to be removed from the equation. Fig. 2 CIRCULAR ECONOMY It is important to note that carbon storage is merely a subset of carbon footprint. Carbon footprint refers to more than just the carbon stored in furniture, but also considers emissions generated from the manufacturing process, the logistical aspects like transportation, and more. To calculate the carbon footprint, a lifecycle assessment (LCA) of the product is needed, more than just a carbon storage calculator. Furthermore, for a product to truly be carbon neutral — which is to say, for the carbon to be off-set — it has to store carbon for at least 100 years, according to PEFC. This a lifetime which most furniture items rarely achieve. Even so, understanding how much carbon is stored in a product is still key to lowering the global carbon footprint, especially in an attempt to be carbon neutral or net zero by 2050, as stipulated by the Paris Agreement. While carbon storage in forest is dynamic and changes over time, carbon storage in furniture is static, remains in the product throughout its lifecycle, and only gets released into the atmosphere when it is burned. Prolonging the product’s lifetime therefore helps the carbon footprint, since it delays the carbon from being released. As the PEFC noted in their booklet: “The [cascading use of wood] aims to prolong the permanence of wood biomass within a given system, based on various strategies that include extending the service life of wood products, and reusing and recycling them”. More importantly, for all these calculations on carbon storage to really contribute to the larger picture, the furniture has to be manufactured with MARCH / APRIL <strong>2024</strong> | PANELS & FURNITURE ASIA 17
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Panels & Furniture Asia March/April 2024

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