Businesses ignore the environment at their peril

The business environment is being shaped and turned upside down by three fundamental challenges:

1. The need to rapidly adapt to political and economic change.
2. Responding to increasing consumer demand and legislative requirement for greater sustainability and business transparency.
3. The need for business and brands to engage and influence behaviours in employees and consumers.

Over the course of 2015 most companies have put the foundations in place to provide greater transparency in their business dealings and greater emphasis on sustainable business practices. Companies such as Marks & Spencer have a fairly comprehensive sustainability strategy whilst others have done little more than a bit of window dressing backed by copious amounts of PR spin.

As we start 2016 being seen to be “a good corporate citizen” will become an increasingly important consideration for companies. Companies hiding in tax havens, short-changing consumers with questionable service and business practices whilst evading or ignoring regulatory requirements will pay an increasingly heavy price with both regulators and customers. Whilst this is clearly a shift in the right direction very little of this has much positive impact on the local community that surrounds every business. Improved roads, high-speed rail links and international travel means that increasingly workers’ homes and family are considerable distances from where they work. Any interaction with the local environment is confined to staring at it out of the train, bus or car window. As a consequence companies and their employees feel little or no affinity with natural surroundings that are right on their workplace doorstep.

This matters because larger national and international businesses that have the resources to invest in protecting and improving the local environment have very little engagement with it. Consequently Corporate, Social, Responsibility programmes become driven by brand association and scale of PR opportunity and not necessarily by what would help the local communities that serve them or the local environment that sustains them. We are well aware that many local businesses, large and small national and international do a lot to support and enhance the local environment. That said in an era of cash strapped local councils there is a real danger that too great a proportion of businesses will stand aside and fail to notice or care about the loss of local forests, parks and amenities, taking no interest in the environmental concerns right on their doorstep, preferring instead to pursue more emotive “PR rich” and global opportunities. In this instance they should not be surprised when their businesses flood, high streets and local amenities decline and local infrastructure deteriorates, not just where you work but also where you live because businesses in the area you live in will be equally ambivalent about the park, woodland or high street down the road from your house.

Will the rhetoric about the importance of the natural environment result in positive action to protect our ancient woodlands?

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has been in the news a lot lately. First as a result of its influence on the pressure to build more houses and partly because the House of Lords Select Committee is currently reviewing the development and implementation of national policy for the built environment.

KWES submitted evidence that NPPF showed provided no protection or indeed reference to the importance of ancient woodland. Planning guidance to local authorities makes much of protecting historic and ancient buildings and monuments but ancient woodland doesn’t even get a mention. For woodland to be classed as ancient it needs to date back to at least 1600 so we are not talking about your average wood. Ancient woodland makes up less than 1% of the UK landmass and once lost can never be replaced. Some might wonder why we should concern ourselves with protecting ancient woodland. To most people one wood looks much like another so what’s the difference? Well take a quick look at the two photographs below and it should be obvious.

Ancient woodland

Commercial woods

Aside from the fact that the former would be much more pleasant to walk around than the latter, the biodiversity found in ancient woodland is a vital natural habitat for a whole range of creatures that are under real threat. More importantly ancient woodland may prove to be the key to the very survival of the human race. Yes that sounds fantastical but the key to the next phase of antibiotics are currently thought to be the microbes in soil and ancient woodland is amongst the richest source of microbes on the planet.

Without statutory protection ancient woodland will remain at the mercy of social and commercially driven decisions to build more houses and better roads which is a desirable aim but it must not be at the expense of our natural heritage or potentially our future.

Why burning wood is being encouraged

There has been much discussion about the benefits of burning wood over fossil fuels such as oil or gas or coal. Scientists are pretty unanimous in their view that burning wood is preferable to burning fossil fuels principally because fossil fuels release their stored carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 which of course is the main contributor to global warming.

Wood by contrast is deemed to be carbon neutral (as opposed to being C02 free) because the carbon neutral equation makes the assumption that wood which is felled for burning is replaced with new trees that absorb CO2 so this compensates for the CO2 that wood gives off when burnt.

Looked at another way wood could be considered carbon neutral because the tree sucked CO2 out of the atmosphere when it was alive which is simply released back into the atmosphere when the tree is burnt so the overall impact on the earth’s CO2 level is neutral. This calculation holds true provided you chose to ignore any contribution fossil fuels add in CO2 emissions in the transport and tree felling process. To be fair the processing and transport CO2 addition would be worse with fossil fuels and they have none of the CO2 absorbing benefits that wood has.

Taking all this into account the Forestry Commission states that using wood for heating reduces carbon emissions by 90-95 per cent compared to fossil fuel use. This is why KWES, Kent Woodland Employment Scheme strongly encourages wood as it is a better alternative to fossil fuel but we would not fully subscribe to the view that wood is “carbon neutral”. We would describe burning wood as a source of fuel as “carbon lean”.

Burning wood at a rural location inside a building is reasonably clean and with a flue, the health effects will be minimal. In a situation like a village, town or city it is not so clear cut: ambient levels can rise severely (for example, in Christchurch, New Zealand), where wood burning is common, wintertime levels of particulates can become very high, causing an estimated 100 deaths a year. What the death toll would have been using fossil fuels alone is not estimated but most experts agree coal would be much worse and gas would be better circ. 40 deaths a year.

As to the area of woodland required to feed the widespread adoption of wood as a fuel, this is a less contentious issue. It depends, of course, on the type of building being heated – a newly built ultra efficient house will require much less than an older house. And if heating and hot water are both being generated by wood burning this will increase the requirement.

Forestry Commission figures estimate 8 tonnes/year of air dry wood to heat a three bedroomed house. A 10 year fuel wood coppice rotation of mixed deciduous trees produces about 1 tonne/acre/year (or 2.3 tonnes/ha/year), so 8 acres of coppice would be required to produce 8 tonnes of wood per year. Even the fastest growing trees – alder, willow, poplar, eucalyptus – would require 6 acres to produce 8 tonnes of wood per year. For the 30 million households in Britain this would require about 4 times the total agricultural and forestry land area available. Of course nobody is suggesting the entire population of Britain use wood fuel. However, it is clear that in an era when food will need to be grown more intensively, more locally and more sustainably, there will only be enough land for a comparatively small minority to use wood for fuel so there is still much work to be done in making sustainable sources of fuel for everyone a possibility.

The UK has too many craftsmen who are going to waste

Recent research by the Crafts Council found 11,620 craft businesses who generate roughly £2billion to the UK economy. Even though most are highly skilled at what they do, about half of these businesses are unregistered and fall below the VAT threshold. Sadly this is no surprise to us but it is a shocking waste of talent.

KWES Kent Woodland Employment Scheme’s own experience is that customers are keen to buy low value items such as pea sticks and willow or hazel hurdles but there is little or no demand for hardwoods like oak, ash, beech, cherry etc. unless you can provide it in bulk in uniform lengths and planed square. Unfortunately hardwood timber on that scale is not really commercially viable because our forests have not been maintained and nurtured to produce timber on an industrial scale. Many of our oak forests for example were originally planted by the Elizabethans for ship building and in the more recent past the demands of the paper industry in Kent consumed 200,000 tons of wood a year. With the demise of these industries much of our woodland has disappeared or become overgrown and poorly maintained.

There is now no network to ensure quality wood is directed to those who can best utilise it. Consequently expediency means most hardwood ends up as logs which in turn makes the limited stock of hardwoods that avoid this fate very expensive and obtainable only from specialist sawmills. Timber merchants tend to focus on construction quality soft wood and man made timber such as MDF, plywood and Accoya from abroad. Hardwood is mostly used for flooring, most of which is also sourced from abroad. For the skilled craftsman this makes quality timber hard to find and expensive. This problem is compounded in the UK by a lack of a tradition in supporting local craftsmen and an appreciation of lasting quality and craftsmanship.

The preference for most people in the UK today it now seems is instantly available, low quality, flat pack furniture that looks good at a superficial level but will end up in landfill in a few years. This is in stark contrast to countries like the USA who have a much more enlightened tradition of supporting and appreciating craftsmanship for its own sake and look beyond the item’s purely utilitarian function.

How much of today’s furniture made in this way will still be in use in the UK 50 years from now, we wonder, and what proportion will be made of hardwood?

Why bother to season wood before burning it?

When choosing wood for burning there are two significant factors that have an effect on the amount of available heat generated by each log. These two factors are moisture content and wood density.

The most important factor is the moisture content of wood. Wood density has only a comparatively minor impact and for domestic use can be largely discounted. Any water in the timber has to boil away before the wood will burn, and this will reduce the net energy released as useful heat (as opposed to steam up the chimney). If you can get them to light at all, logs that aren’t dry will result in a fire that smoulders and creates lots of tars and smoke. These tars can be corrosive, potentially damaging the lining of the flue and increasing the danger of a chimney fire. Wet logs will tend to blacken glass in stoves even if the stove is designed to keep the glass clean. As a rough guide well seasoned logs generate approximately twice the heat of the equivalent green logs.

Conventionally firewood is felled in the winter with a moisture content of around 50% and must be seasoned down to between 20% and 30% to make it suitable for use as fuel in smaller combustion systems like wood burning stoves. Anything over 30% moisture content is unsuitable for domestic fires in our view.

How to season logs

After felling, timber should ideally be left in an exposed site outside the woods where it can be stacked off the ground on bearers, facing the prevailing wind. Dense hardwoods with smaller cells like oak, beech, sycamore and hornbeam need to be seasoned for two summers and a winter. Conifers and fast growing broadleaves like ash, birch and poplar, with larger cells, can often be seasoned in one spring and a summer depending on the weather.

Stacked logs would benefit from covering during the winter to prevent reabsorption of moisture. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it is particularly important to prevent snow from settling on seasoning timber.

Seasoning for the log market can be speeded up by logging, splitting and covering soon after felling. Storage in a well-ventilated area under cover is ideal for logs.

Are some species better than others?

Some species are better than others. When deciding which wood is best for domestic fires we find the following old poem helpful:-

Logs to burn; logs to burn;

Logs to save the coal a turn.

 Here’s a word to make you wise

When you hear the woodman’s cries;

Never heed his usual tale

That he’s splendid logs for sale

But read these lines and really learn

The proper kind of logs to burn.

 Oak logs will warm you well,

If they’re old and dry.

Larch logs of pinewoods smell

But the sparks will fly.

Beech logs for Christmas time;

Yew logs heat well;

‘Scotch’ logs it is a crime

For anyone to sell.

Birch logs will burn too fast;

Chestnut scarce at all;

Hawthorn logs are good to last

If cut in the fall.

Holly logs will burn like wax,

You should burn them green;

Elm logs like smouldering flax,

No flame to be seen.

Pear logs and apple logs,

They will scent your room;

Cherry logs across the dogs

Smell like flowers in bloom,

But ash logs all smooth and grey

Burn them green or old,

Buy up all that come your way

They’re worth their weight in gold.

                 Honor Goodhart, 1926

How to tell a well seasoned log.

There are a number of tell tale signs to look for:

1. Radial cracks and bark that comes off easily suggests well-seasoned wood
2. Well seasoned wood is much lighter in weight than green wood
3. If you own a moisture metre you will find that 15-20% moisture content is optimal, anything approaching 30% or over is too wet to burn efficiently in domestic use.

Acknowledgements

Phil Potter Woodfuel East http://bit.ly/1ExGpgC

 

 

Will the predicted drop in oil prices for the next 3 years herald the end of growth in green energy alternatives?

Stately home owner Lord Carnarvon, who owns Highclere Castle where Downton Abbey is filmed, has done the maths and decided that in the light of the drop in oil prices a switch to wood fired boilers no longer makes sense for him and as a consequence the project is on hold. Other stately homeowners who have already made the switch to wood fired boilers find that they are still making considerable savings over oil especially when you consider that the retail price of oil has not dropped as sharply as the wholesale one. So what are the implications for those of us with much more modest homes with oil fired central heating?

Clearly the drop in oil price is welcome news and ensuring that your house is effectively insulated is probably a sensible financial and environmental step as it may qualify for an installation grant and typical savings in the region of £300 per year on your heating bill. If like many people you supplement your central heating with a log fire is this still a sensible step financially?

Of course much depends on whether you can get well seasoned logs or have the space to store logs until they are properly seasoned. Seasoning logs is a way of lowering the moisture content in wood so that it burns more efficiently and is often described as being more of an art than a science. According to Phil Potter of Woodfuel East a tonne of wood at 50% moisture content has a calorific value (CV) of only around 2,300 kWh but a tonne of wood at 20% moisture content has a CV of over 4,100 kWh. In money terms, if a kWh of heat is worth 5p then a tonne of wood at 50% MC is worth £116.38 but a tonne of wood at 20% MC is worth £206.55. The higher value takes a bit of time and effort to achieve but the rewards are clear (we will make seasoning the subject of another blog).

So given the lower oil price at the moment the benefit financially of supplementing or even replacing oil fired central heating with wood fires or wood fired boilers is clearly more marginal than it was. To gain a clear financial picture you would probably need to get independent advice on your specific circumstances but what we would say is that financial gain is not the only consideration. Having the whole family sitting round your oil central heating boiler doesn’t conjure up the same image of contentment and joy that a log fire or stove can provide.  Nor is the lovely aroma generated when burning logs like apple or cherry matched by the faint smell for fuel oil that hangs around many oil fired boilers.

When making the calculation about which fuel best suits your needs we believe that the considerations are more wide spread than cost alone.

Supporting high quality sustainable wood products produced in the UK

KWES is a big supporter of using sustainable wood products that are high quality and made in the United Kingdom. Cheap imports of inferior quality products made of materials such as bamboo led to the general demise of many of the “traditional skills” such as coppicing that had worked in harmony with the environment for centuries.   But now that there is a resurgence in “traditional skills” a market for high quality, locally sourced, sustainable products is emerging.

We hope that you feel as we do that we all need to make better use of the resources we have on our door step. We also need to take better care of the environment around us so that we preserve irreplaceable assets such as ancient woodland and the unique and diverse habitat that it supports.  There is no reason why these woodlands can’t earn their keep and  activities like coppicing, clearing fallen trees to make firewood or timber is an essential part of ensuring we pass on healthy woodland to future generations.

This is why KWES is training its apprentices in how to coppice,  and  look after these woodlands  as well as make products such as charcoal, properly seasoned logs, faggots, fencing etc. to sell. We see this as an essential part of training our apprentices and in helping to fund the activities of KWES. As we work in ancient woodlands which are subject to a Forestry Commission Management Plan we are also able to show that wood products from those woods are the result of sustainable management.

If you would like any more information please contact Susannah on 07860 942900 or email info@kwes.org.uk