Sustainability Challenge:
Wood is a popular renewable building material; however, less than 65 percent of a tree can be used for solid lumber.
Chemistry Solution:
Hexion EcoBindTM resin technology helps manufacturers recover more usable wood from trees, resulting in a variety of engineered wood products for use in building materials.
Sustainability Benefit:
Engineered wood can enable more than 95 percent of every tree to be used, saving natural resources and expanding use of renewable wood resources.
Wood has long been a material of choice for building and construction, due to its strength, multi-functional uses and sustainability attributes. Wood products are naturally biodegradable, renewable, energy efficient and help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In addition, sustainable forestry helps enable new growth that adds more than two times the amount of wood removed from U.S. forests for building and construction every year.
Specialty chemical manufacturer Hexion developed EcoBindTM ultra-low-emission resins for binding wood products. With its ability to provide high tensile strength, durability and heat and water-resistance, these resins can help create engineered wood products that use more of the wood from trees for products that are stronger and more durable than wood alone.
These resins can help transform wood veneer, fibers and strands of lumber into engineered wood like plywood, oriented strand board, flooring and I-joists used in construction, as well as in a wide variety of products like thermally fused laminate, laminated countertops, floors, cabinets, molding, doors and furniture.
Engineered wood panels can be made from recovered wood waste that might otherwise be burned or disposed of in a landfill. So EcoBindTM resin technology can help trees that enter a mill to be used to their maximum potential. For example, while typically only 63 percent of a tree is used to manufacture solid lumber, creation of engineered wood panels using EcoBindTM can put 95 percent of a tree to use.
Hexion’s resin technology advances have enabled engineered wood panel manufacturers to reduce their composite panel emissions – for products such as particleboard, medium density fiberboard and hardwood plywood – by 80 to 90 percent since the early 1980s. These stewardship efforts have resulted in products that meet performance requirements set by the marketplace and regulatory bodies to minimize emissions – some emissions are at or very near the level of wood itself.
Hexion’s EcoBindTM resin technology meets or exceeds numerous global emission standards, including those set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Air Resources Board and European and Japanese standards, as well as specifications recommended by the U.S. Green Building Council.
