Alternative building materials are on the rise, but some people are not happy

Several parliamentarians, key industry players and alternative materials start-ups in hemp, engineered bamboo and engineered timber attended an event on Tuesday night designed to focus a spotlight on the new world of possibilities in building materials.

• Circular economy forum on 12 November will also focus on this topic with a Spanish Inquisition (or shark tank with VC funders) as well as a special debate on timber – is it as sustainable as we’d all like it to be?

The WWF and Forest Alliance NSW event was intended to showcase sustainable alternatives to timber products that are dependent on logging native forests, with the protection of the proposed Great Koala National Park at the centre of conversations. The event was further supported by the Parliamentary Friends of Forests.

Attending as exhibitors were House of Bamboo, Hemp Inside, Bamboo Society Australia, Australian Hemp Council, iHempNSW, BVN and betti & knut. While XLAM, providers of a range of pine timber products, was originally on the list of presenters, an industry source says the pressure from forestry sources had forced the company to pull out.

“The forestry industry put pressure on a couple of exhibitors, Xlam included, to pull out of the event, which was supporting alternative materials for the building and construction industry beyond logging native forests,” a source familiar with the event said.

“It was very much about celebrating the Great Koala National Park, and that there are alternative ways we need to be thinking about providing employment opportunities for people in regional areas, such as with engineered timber, engineered bamboo, hemp and other products.”

North Coast Environment Council vice president and former chair of FSC Australia Susie Russell, who ideated the event, told The Fifth Estate, “the logging industry keeps on saying we have to log our forests because we absolutely need it to make particular products.

“It seemed like we needed to bring that reality to parliament [and] the decision makers, to show them that whatever the logging industry says, ‘ we are irreplaceable’, is not true. [There] clearly are alternatives, they are available now, you can buy them now, and people are using them.”

Russell said she was particularly inspired by a visit to House of Bamboo, where she realised that similar products to timber can be made from bamboo, which only takes five years to grow.

“Why would we cut down 100 year old trees or 60 year old trees that are home for koalas and greater gliders and all sorts of species when we can actually grow [bamboo] quickly, have a new industry and create more jobs.

“Then we started talking to the hemp people, and they also have products that are a replacement for timber products, particularly fibreboard, and they can grow theirs in a year.

“There’s also some really great structural engineering products from pine plantations that are as strong as hardwood, so we really don’t need to log our native forests.”

Kicking off the night was an address from WWF chief executive Dermot O’Gorman, who said the showcase was “really about looking forward.

“It’s not about what we need to stop, although we do need to stop native forest logging in this state, but it’s around the solutions that are out there already and how we are able to work together to scale them.

“Not everyone thinks of hemp as a solution, but there are some amazing solutions in hemp that we can really start to scale, and also in looking at what the architectural firms are able to do with sustainable timber.”

Justin Field, convener for the Forest Alliance NSW, said his organisation’s network of environmental NGOs was “unashamed to be campaigning to end public native forest logging in NSW.”

Field is a trained military intelligence officer who was formerly a Greens member of the NSW legislative council but left the party to become independent in 2019, where he continued his career as a politician until 2023.

Field recommended his colleagues and new politicians in the role “have a read of the inquiry report into the future of the timber industry in NSW,” saying the report recognised opportunities for plantation and alternative materials to be “part of the future” of the timber and construction industry.

The report addressed “how we were going to ultimately navigate our way out of what I think most people recognise, is an inevitable end to public native forest logging in New South Wales.

“The reality is …. there is an economic imperative to end public native forest logging because the state lobby logging company is losing millions of dollars every year.”

Field said the body had been “fined millions” for environmental breaches, is currently in court and has been prosecuted on 29 counts by the Environmental Protection Authority.

“There is also an ecological imperative for change. The reality is that Australia and New South Wales are both global leaders in mammal extinctions and in the loss of native vegetation. The reality is that 70 per cent of all terrestrial species live in forests.

“There is also a carbon imperative, and some of the lowest hanging fruit and the greatest opportunity [for carbon sequestration and an] economic opportunity for the state comes in protecting our mature forests and allowing our degraded forests to regenerate and become the mature forests of the future.

About the Great Koala National Park, Field said, “Of course it’s going to have consequences on the timber industry in those areas,” adding it will take out 40 per cent of the high-quality wood supply on the north coast.

“Chris Minns (NSW premier) made it really clear that the reason they were going for a ‘full park’ is because anything other than the full park wouldn’t deliver the ecological outcome that was needed…to ensure that my son and future generations will be able to see a koala.”

Field added that there was recognition that the industry was changing and that as companies such as those in the energy industry moved away from using timber power poles to composite materials, the economics of the industry and wood supply changed.

There was also recognition that the koala park could become a global tourism icon and create economic opportunities for people on the North Coast, as there were further opportunities to involve traditional owners in the future management of the forest.

He also said he hoped the event would create new economic opportunities.

Members of parliament on the night included Michael Kemp, Tim Crakanthorp, Anthony D’Adam, Jacqui Scruby, Michael Regan, Jeremy Buckingham, Sue Higginson, and Joe McGirr.

The challenges of transition

Adrian Taylor, regenerative lead at BVN, was also at the event to represent his architecture firm, which he says has a commitment to “pushing the boundaries of sustainable construction” and using “sustainably sourced timber products as primary building materials”. It’s the key to decarbonising construction and building a circular economy, he said.

“It is quite good to see more developments of ‘crop’ building materials,” Taylor later told The Fifth Estate.

He explained there were three major base materials, which are synthetics (petroleum), mineral (metals, cements), plant based (trees, grasses etc), and to a lesser extent animal based (leathers, wool).

“Timber when sustainably sourced through responsibly run plantation or managed forest, helps avoid the land destruction typical of extractive activities.

“Timber crops like hemp and bamboo produce more material in less time, so the ration of land to product is improved, even if they can’t stand in for all timber applications.”

The challenge now was that there are “legislative gaps” and “a lack of investment” when it comes to bolstering local manufacturing capabilities.

“It is quite difficult, if not impossible, to procure sufficient Australian timber products for BVN’s major projects, [although] we do persist in any medium-small scale projects to [partner] with local manufacturers to support their growth.”

Hemp is a rising star – with challenges but great prospects

Also present at the event was iHemp NSW, a body affiliated with the Australian Hemp Council. One of the representatives was Christopher Ball, co-founder of hemp startup Otetto.

His company creates its trademark hemp based structural insulated panels, which Ball says allows them to build homes in four to five days. The homes are built in a factory, cured and then delivered to the site assembled.

Only three to four of these homes have been built so far, and while they are progressing, Ball said his company is facing the same challenges that plague the industry – securing funding.

“The problem is we are competing with conventional materials that have price points at scale, whereas we have a niche product. We’ve been doing it in pitches about $1000 per square metre, and we’ve now brought it down to $500 to $600.”

Currently, conventional materials are offered at around $350 to $400 but will rise to $450 next year, Ball said. If his company could bring the materials down to around $500, adoption rates would skyrocket.

As a builder by trade, Ball said owners would save on construction costs, such as $90,000 on site costs, and would additionally save $50,000 to $70,000 over a 20 year period, which would take costs well below $500 per sq m.

“Speed of construction needs to be faster and that’s what we’re trying to [address] with our panels; we can have high performing homes and at speed.”

Hemp farmer Bob Dolye was also there to support his business Hemp Inside, a business supplying hemp growing contracts with end-to-end tracking, including which houses a specific crop goes towards, all carbon inputs, greenhouse gas emissions and embodied carbon in the process.

Doyle, who had been in the industry since 2005, said the reason the community want to shift into creating hemp products was to ensure the fibre had “permanence”, as some of the products of hemp would normally only last five years. But when used to create housing materials, the products last more than 25 years.

“That’s what we want as part of our contribution, to allow New South Wales and Australia to meet our emissions targets. For every bit of those we reduce emissions on, we’re saving cash.”

But policy wise “we haven’t got there yet,” said Doyle. “Partly because we aren’t a big enough industry yet.”

In terms of how the industry needs to move, “we need to get this registered so it meets the Paris Agreement, and we can count these in terms of ACCUs (Australian Carbon Credit Units).”