Unfortunately, life has gotten the way for all of us, from relocations to renovations, exhibitions and engagements. We've all been super busy over the last six or eight months. Sadly, Gerard and Ben have decided to step away from the pod this season, although I do hope to have them on from time to time. To fill the void, this season I'm engaging with guests across the industry and beyond to bring more casual chat, maybe some information and a bit of background noise to entertain you all. For our first episode, the microphone has been turned on me as I play interviewee rather than host. In this episode, we explore timber treatment and timber use in LTRO, in particular waste, and how current practices have evolved, where gaps in knowledge remain, and what they mean for the future of the building industry. Our guest has worked closely with the Better Building Network and WoW in Central Otago, engaging with architects, builders, suppliers, manufacturers, and researchers to gather perspectives from across the sector. Together we discuss what the industry understands about treated timber and how better information could support healthier, more durable, and more sustainable buildings. So without further ado, welcome to season three of the Design Principles pod, and let's dive in.
SPEAKER_02So
my name's Toby. I am a student at the University of Otago, currently undertaking a master's of sustainable business. Part of this program, I am conducting research exploring the opportunities and challenges associated with improving timber circularity within New Zealand's construction sector. Through interviews with industry professionals, I aim to better understand current practices, perceived barriers, and potential strategies for enabling the reuse and recovery of timber and supporting a transition towards a more circular built environment. This interview will consist of a series of questions about your experiences, perspectives, and knowledge relating to timber use, waste management, material recovery, and circular economy principles within the construction industry.
SPEAKER_00Did you have much pick up from anyone else in the whale group?
SPEAKER_02I've managed to get in engineers, uh one of the builders. I've got uh suppliers from minor ten and placemakers, got Terry Ann from she's part of a research group that does research into construction, the building industry, architects. Yeah, so quite a quite a broad spectrum across the industry.
SPEAKER_00It'll be fascinating to kind of see what the cross section of responses is like.
SPEAKER_02It has been good because I'm not saying there's finger pointing going from, you know, pointing out designers of but there there is a bit of a circular where people are trying to find the answers. Yeah, yeah. And people don't really know what the other people are doing. You know, the builders don't really know what the designers are doing, and the designers don't know what the everyday life of uh the suppliers are doing, and it's that's the root of the problem, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00I think in terms of what your research question is or what you're looking at. Like I think that that's really the stem of it all is the fact that we're not talking across the sector about this sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_02No, and and you know, we're all in the same sector. I work at placemakers, we're all in the same sector, but we're all essentially different industries. So um so that understanding across across multiple fields, uh I'm finding is more and more key, which is great, because that'd be really interesting to to write about. I'll start
with the easiest question. What is your role within the organization and the building industry as a whole?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I am director of RET Architects, 10102. We're a small architecture firm based in Wellington and Otago. Um we primarily work in the residential sector, but do work across hospitality and small commercial as well. And you know, in terms of the building sector, yeah, we're architects, we're one of the, I guess, the leading partners in the design and development of the built environment. Head of the snake, you could say. So we have the power to actually um influence quite a bit of change, you know, around this around this idea and this concept. Uh, although, like you've just said, there's there's always a bit of finger pointing, a bit of pushback around those those sorts of change. But I'd say one thing that we as a profession are relatively good at is challenging norms and and innovation. So, you know, we've got that ability to kind of make change by enforcing design decisions that that help that.
SPEAKER_02Can
you describe your understanding of how timber's used within the New Zealand building industry?
SPEAKER_00I think uh depends what sectors you're looking at. Like if you look at the residential sector, 90 plus 95% of housing is is group home driven, and all of that is timber framed. Well, the vast, vast majority of that is timber framed. A lot of it pegged around the New Zealand timber construction standard NZ 3604. So timber's used extensively in the built environment, particularly residential built environment in New Zealand. And there's now, from a commercial point of view, uh around CLT construction as well. New Zealand's got the added benefit of having lots of land and lots of places to grow forests. So timber's always been probably one of our primary building materials due to that. My thoughts on it is that we are still, with the exception of kind of that development around CLT, still pretty archaic in our use and understanding of timber. And I think in recent times, sort of like in the last decade plus, a fear of liability, which is industry-wide, all the way from designers and engineers through to builders and in particular councils, around structure and stability systems and all of that has led to an overuse of timber, which I guess probably leads into your next question. Yeah. I'd say that the most timber wastage is generated because of that um fear of liability. And I think we have as an industry have been too quick to kind of say, Oh, it needs to be a little bit stronger, just whack another piece of timber in here, let's whack another piece of timber in here, I'll just whack another piece of timber in here, or just upsize that, you know, just make that one a bit bigger. And all that's led to wild over-specification of timber framing and building. This is particularly around stick framing. And so, yeah, like I think that is kind of where timber sits at the moment is in this sort of overuse. I mean, it's still a fantastic product, you know, there's obviously the consideration about around question of carbon within the growth structure and everything, but excessive use of it, I'd say, and and the structure of buildings is is actually leading to be or starting to become a bit of a problem. In particular, when you consider the treatment of timber and the fact that it has to be so heavily treated, the timber that we use in anyway, which is predominantly radio pine. It's crap. You know, but for all intents and purposes, it it grows straight, but it warps like how and needs it needs to be treated to bilio to actually be used in the built environment, and that is posing in itself a bit of a problem, which I assume is where your you know research question stems from.
SPEAKER_02Yeah,
it is. It's um there's uh not just in New Zealand, but worldwide, there's a massive amount of waste that goes into landfill from construction. But in New Zealand, I think I think it was something like 33%.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02Then the Queenstown Lakes District. I talked to the girls in the sustainability uh department there. Uh we're right online it's about 25% no, sorry, a bit over a third of the landfill that goes into Victoria Flats is from the building industry.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_02Might actually be closer to 40%. Of that 25% is timber. And that's the highest out of all materials, both from domestic and commercial, the highest percentage of materials is timber off cuts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And most of those would be treated. And Emily Brocke, who's the head of sustainability there, said a hundred percent of that could be reused in some form, in some cases. So so it's not it's taking up landfill space, but it's also everything to do with that. It's the transportation of the timber, you know, which is um emissions. Um once it gets in there, it's creating methane. The treatments are potentially, and I don't think there's a huge amount of research on this, but it's potentially leaking into soils, possibly groundwater. I don't want to, you know, probably that's a bit of a reach.
SPEAKER_00I don't know about that. I'd I'd I wouldn't say it's too much of a reach. If you consider particularly like any CCA treated timber, like that leaches out. Like I've had a chat with builders that work, and particularly landscapers that work with H4 plus treated timber. And they say kind of after the after a month or so of building retaining walls and everything, kidneys hurt from that leaching into their skin. Right absorbing into their body. Like, no, I'm not kidding, like legitimately said that. I've got a friend up in Wellington who did a lot of landscape work and and called it quits because he he couldn't handle dealing with that high treated timber anymore and gone into just building, but yeah, he he was the one that was sort of like, yeah, after building retaining walls, you know, kidneys would sort of be like, oh Jesus Christ. Okay, right. Yeah. So I don't think it's that much of a reach to say that it's leaching into the into the ground. And like you said, in terms of quantity as well, timber's a high bulk material. It's not that's not compacting down, it's taking up huge amounts of space. We've talked till we're blue in the face about it in the BBWG. And I guess that's why you reached out to the group, you know, about what solutions there could be, and we we kind of still scratching our heads.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's where the foundation of my uh research, the idea of it was when I went to we did a uh an excursion with the BBWG to Victoria Flats, and they said timber is is a massive problem, not only because of what I just described, but uh it's also having a lot of effect on their machinery. It doesn't compact, it gets stuck in the machine you know, it's it's just a huge problem for them. And when 100% of it could be diverted away from landfill, we need to find out, well, why is there so much? How is this happening? And what can we do about it going into the future? So my research of uh the conclusion because I'm doing this on behalf of uh the WoW organization, they've got a big project called Journey to 2126, which not just covers the building industry but the gen the region in general and how we become more sustainable and circular in the way we live. They they really want to look at waste in totality and how can they divert a lot of that waste away from landfill. That's where my research is is trying to find these answers, trying to find hot a holistic and systematic ways of cutting down the amount of timber that's getting into the ground.
It's interesting, there's quite a f I mean there's a lot of mechanisms that have been floated, and I think they are all valid, a lot of them, in terms of recycling timber, well off-cut timber. Big problem is just upfront costs, and somebody who's kind of got either the capital or the balls to jump in there and be like, yep, I'm gonna build this recycling plant or this factory which is gonna use this byproduct or waste, and no one's really willing to do that. We had an episode with a with a friend who works for XLAM CLT company and challenged him about it as well, being like, your whole construction system is built on using off-cuts of timber, basically. Why don't you have a mechanism for taking these off-cuts in this reclaimed timber or whatever and then pressing it into CLT panels? And his defense to that and and understandable as well, is that it's not certified, but everything's gonna be stress tested and all this sort of stuff, and the upfront cost and the doing that with reclaimed material is just too high. But how long can you keep just being like, oh, it's too expensive, kick it down the road, too, or it's too hard, kick it down the road. It's not really a valid argument anymore when this is such a big problem.
SPEAKER_02I also find, and this is not just with timber, but this is gonna become a problem going into the future. And this is where the whole circular economy discussion has started gaining traction, is that eventually sourcing and either mining or or growing raw virgin materials is going to become more expensive than recycling. Just with the nature of it. So rather than trying to catch up when that happens all of a sudden, especially in a place like New Zealand where we don't really produce many raw materials. I mean, we produce timber, sure, but it is just trying to think ahead of where the market's going and get that step ahead and saying, okay, well, how can we get these circular systems in place before the remote raw materials become priced out of the market and w that we can't source them anymore or I think it's it's twofold.
SPEAKER_00It's that exactly what you've just said. But then I think it's also being more design conscious about designing out certain materials or designing out excess materials and excess systems, and just being more conscious about design decisions and construction in particular, not just throwing more at it, it's being more considered in the process.
SPEAKER_02What's
what barriers do you think uh do you see reducing timber waste or reducing timber within our current system? What is the major challenge?
SPEAKER_00It's that over-reliance on stick framing and timber construction in general as our primary building methodology. And within that, it's the designer, prenalers, engineers, penchant for just throwing more timber at the problem. Brands did a study, you probably would have looked into it a couple of years ago now, around the percentage of um solid timber in exterior walls or external walls. Predominantly looking at this from a thermal performance point of view, but it has a lot of other uh interesting flow-ons and implications. And they anticipated or they thought that the percentage would be around 18 to 20% of external walls would be solid timber. And it turned out that the average was around 34%, with some cases up to 50%. So you're talking the entire exterior of your building, but for 30 to 50% of that is just solid timber. And the problem with that is thermal bridging, so less thermal performance, less space for insulation. But to what you're researching, the big problem there is it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be that much timber. And all it takes is an engineer looking at it and being like, well, we don't need particularly around like windows, you don't need a jack stud, trimmer stud, stud beside it, and then let's just chuck another one in for good measure kind of vibe, which is so often the case. You can engineer that out, you can have a jack stud, trim or stud, and then just fix lintel, side fix your lintels, take two studs out, you've just reduced that build-up by 50%, you know, and all it takes is a little bit of consideration and a couple of extra structural fixings. Not a big change, not a costly change, but it has huge design upsides. And so I think, yeah, the biggest challenge is over reliance on 3604, over-reliance on stick framing, and just a fear of doing something outside of the norm, really. Like if you drive around any housing development or you know, you see any house being built on site, whether it's prenal or whether it's framed stood on site, and the whole thing just looks like total spaghetti sandwich of of timber. And so I think off-site manufacturing has probably got a has a lot of legs to it to be able to reduce the amount of timber usage and efficiencies. But then I think also design considerations is probably the other big one that needs to be addressed in terms of reducing like the amount of timber and looking at alternative systems as well.
SPEAKER_02Fixing off-cuts and everything around builders, what they do on site is really the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02And that, you know, it starts with the designers.
Is there much talk uh within the design or architecture world around sustainability and around circular economy? Is this something that's at the top of people's minds?
SPEAKER_00It's definitely becoming more so. Um there's been a really big push in the last sort of three to five years around understanding. The sustainability has always been a buzzword, but I'd say that a lot of architecture practices have not really appreciated that in its totality. It's now becoming not just a, you know, kind of like a nice to have, but it's becoming an, I mean, it is a necessity now. And I think the design community is responding to that. And this kind of goes in play with the introduction of mandatory carbon counting around the built environment and things. So where's designers are being forced to upskill in that area, which I think is really important. So we're becoming more conscious about our decision making than we have been in the past, which is a positive. And you're kind of starting to see that more focus on off-site manufacturing and fabrication, more care and consideration that's going into specification, looking at New Zealand aid, looking at reclaimed, recycled materials, because it all helps with that embodied carbons. I think we as a profession are definitely training in the right direction, but it's still there's a lot of people to move to that next level of understanding that it takes a while.
SPEAKER_02Within New Zealand, when uh students studying architecture, is sustainability and sustainable design a core paper or is it just uh an elective?
SPEAKER_00When I went through university over a decade ago, uh it was an elective. Now, no, no, I know this because I was just just been sitting in on the development of the course, the architecture course down here at Dunedin. It is a core paper now, and I think that is important. I'm not sure about the other schools, but I'd imagine that it would be. And I'd say that we would be looking for, in terms of graduates coming out of the architecture schools and everything, at least a pretty solid understanding of embodied carbon and and and sustainable practices and building methodologies is a is a necessity, not a nice to have, really.
SPEAKER_02I've had a
lot of talk around initiatives and incentives. Can you describe any practices or initiatives that you've seen work well in this space to reduce timber or improve reuse either worldwide or in New Zealand?
SPEAKER_00Both myself and my business partner are HomeStar Designers, and I'm a HomeStar assessor, and so we try and put through or encourage clients to put projects through the HomeStar accreditation process. Um and in doing that, you obviously have to go through an embodied carbon analysis and things like that. So it becomes an intrinsic part of the design process and it's tracked and it's quantified and everything, and I think that helps a lot. It'd be nice to see that become, if not mandatory, at least highly encouraged, particularly in the residential sector. In the commercial sector, Green Star is obviously becoming more and more understood and adopted and popular, which is which is good as well. It follows the same principles. So there are initiatives and practices there from like an accreditation point of view to kind of help improve, I guess, reuse um and and waste in general, but in particular in timber, outside of like an accreditation process in terms of like a building methodology, like we've already talked about prefabrication, that idea of cassetting, pre-design systems and things like that, like Hector Eggadu and the likes of Flexi house out of Wellington are doing as well. Their ability to pre-design a system which reduces the use of timber whilst not compromising on like the built performance is is really important. And then also like alternative construction methods. So we use a lot of SIP construction and housing in our practice. And I've you know been a big advocate for SIP construction across the board, and there's multiple reasons. Obviously, the prefabrication nature of it, thermal performance nature of it, but also the reduced amount of timber through our SIP construction is has been quite attractive to us from a construction point of view. So, for example, we did a house in Queenstown called the Village, and standard timber framing percentage-wise, did an analysis at the start of that. If we were to stick frame it, it was about 38% timber and external walls. By changing to SIPS, that reduced down to 9%. What a SIP, sorry? Structurally insulated panels. Right. So basically it was like a sandwich of insulation and then a sheathing product on on the outside. You still have timber occasionally for structural elements and and to fix the spy, you know, to fix the panels together. Yeah. But yeah, like a reduction of like 30, 38% down to nine is pretty significant. So, you know, kind of seeing those raw numbers for us made it a no brainer. Looking at those alternative methods is definitely something that people need to explore a little bit more. But it's hard for them to adopt. And in b in New Zealand in particular, it's hard for people to adopt something that's not kind of part and parcel. We're so you know, we kind of like meet and three veg, you know, NZ3604 building, getting somebody to try something else is often be a bit of a challenge.
There are so many uh I guess unspoken cultural elements to how we build in New Zealand. That uh just talking to Jason from Minor 10, and I know my experience in uh face radius is that you know you get timber lengths at six metres, five point four or five point eight, generally. No one can seem to understand why we do them in those lengths, we just do them in those lengths. Even though we don't have to. It's something in a bygone era whether they fit better on trucks or something between the the change from a uh imperial measuring system to a metric system. There's just a lot of that within the New Zealand building industry. It's that, well, this is how we've always done it. Why change it?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. I think that's the biggest challenge that we have. And it's taking the older established generation of both designers, engineers, and uh builders, it's hard for them to make that change because they've done something this way for their entire lives, and that's understandable. So it's kind of on us for the younger generation coming through to keep pushing these new concepts and ideas, and hopefully eventually, you know, you beat on the door long enough someone will open it.
SPEAKER_02I've
been reading there's a really good uh the World Dream Building Council around things like designing for disassembly, seeing structures, buildings, and material banks and things like material passports.
SPEAKER_00Have you heard it you heard of those sort of terms? I haven't heard of like disassembly concepts. I mean, I understand it, but I haven't heard about them being kind of implemented. I've heard of material passports. You know, I guess it's not dissimilar to like the EPD stamping process and things like that as well. I haven't heard about like those disassembly ideas. I think that's kind of interesting. Yeah, it's it's something that's taken off in Europe.
SPEAKER_02And it's hard to sort of compare Europe to New Zealand because the size of population and the funds available, etc., etc. But their concept is designing now so that 50, 100 years into the future, and this will require quite a bit of technology use to say, okay, this is what's in the building. Every single material has an end-of-life pathway set in stone before it's even constructed. In the design phase, you s you know, right, in a hundred years' time, these beams are gonna then be used for whatever. So it does it's designing with the the idea of sustainable or circular deconstruction.
SPEAKER_00I love that concept.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'll I I'll email you the paper because it's it's really fascinating.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that would be gonna be an incredible undertaking to design a building like that. But yeah, even even I'm now kind of just like my mind's ticking along in the background, like just thinking about how you would even implement that from a design stage, the amount of information that we'd need to have would be pretty lot. Yeah. And like you said, you kind of got the money and the manpower in those bigger in those bigger building sectors than we have here. But in saying that someone lays a framework out for you in a concept there, it's not that hard to adopt. And all it would take would be this is how you bake the cake and you just input your own ingredients, you know?
SPEAKER_02In Europe, they definitely have a lot more standardisation, you know. Their windows are all the same size. There's no real bespoke or not as many bespoke elements as as they do in New Zealand.
SPEAKER_00I still cannot fathom why merchants and window suppliers merchants don't stock like a 600 by 1200 window always, or one meter by meter window always. Similarly to like they do with skylights, you know, like there's a there's a set stock amount of skylights. Why but why aren't we door leafs saying? But why not windows? Every single window is like individually shot drawn and manufactured, like there is no stock sizes, and designers can sometimes feel pigeonholed if they're gonna only give them like this modularity to work with. But I actually think it's quite an interesting design challenge to design to modularity, and that's something that we you know just inherently through using sips and in our in our designs, you're sort of forced into, but you can end up with some quite, you know, you're not limited, you're only limited by your level of creativity. What you can do with a module is pretty impressive, and then the whole time in the background, you know that you're being almost 100% efficient with that material. It definitely makes you feel better from a design perspective.
Do you think this, I guess, bespoke element to New Zealand building, especially in Queenstown Lakes district, where clients have a bit more money to to spend and to get a bit more creative around bespoke ideas. Do you think that is contributing quite a bit to material waste?
SPEAKER_00Yep, definitely. And I think as well, with that with the bespoke, particularly in housing sector, so much of it is and a lot of it comes down to complexity, I think, as well. They're bespoke, but they're also complex a lot of these projects. But the complexity makes things like modularity, off-site construction and things a little bit more difficult. That's definitely changing. I think places like Flexi and Hector Eger now proving that complexity can totally be adopted by modular systems or off-site systems. But traditionally, and you know, up until now, the spoke is often equaled complex, which is often equaled lets us work it out on-site, or like I keep saying, just throw more at the problem. So has it contributed to excessive usage and waste? And yeah, definitely. I think so. I think there's also, you know, the a lot of those projects can be fraught with decisions that are subject to change at the last minute. Bespoke projects, there are often people have a particular need or a want, and that can change through the design process versus the group home sector for all of its sins has has the huge positives of it's creating a replicable housing solution. I won't get into the performance side of it because I've done that enough in the past, but it it creates a replicable housing solution that people are happy, you know, the majority of people are happy with, and there is efficiency in that. The built environment suffers from monotony, but it it benefits in terms of efficiency. So there's sort of like pros and cons to each side of that there. In the most part, bespoke design and architecture is more wasteful, but it doesn't have to be, is I guess is what I'm trying to get at.
Yeah, 100%. So um in terms of a non-for-profit, I guess what would you call wow, a non-for-profit educational organization?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What role do you think they could have in improving how timber is used and managed?
SPEAKER_00Education, probably, is all that they really can do, I would say. I mean, uh it's hard for an organization like, well, like you said, it's a non-for-profit that kind of puts everything into its into itself to actually make real on-the-ground concrete change. But what they can do is they can educate people, and by educating people, they can then enforce that change. I mean, the change is gonna have to come from up high policy changes, but then it also then it will need to filter down through the varying levels of the design and construction and supply arms as well. But it change has to come from somewhere, and that's the only place that it's gonna come from is if people are better educated around the issues that we are facing, and the only way to do that is to give people real hard evidence. And I think Wow do a really good job of making what can be quite a complex uh and difficult to understand thing, which is waste, because I don't think anybody really appreciates waste in its totality. But if they can break that down into digestible and easy to understand packages that people can then take away and sort of champion, which I think they do very, very well, then yeah, that's how they can kind of make start to make a change for sure.
SPEAKER_02In terms of the Queenstown Lakes district in general, where do you think the major challenge in in that area, that region of New Zealand, where do you think the major challenge is? Do you think it's in terms of creating what we've been talking about, timber circularity or material circularity?
SPEAKER_00Do you think it's an infrastructure or policy or yeah, knowledge or I think its biggest challenge as an area is its rapid growth. And its rapid growth has has to be supported by easy to access housing solutions, and those easy-to-access housing solutions are inherently bad producers of timber waste, have been traditionally. So I think that rapid growth and reliance is kind of fighting again, a bit of a losing battle there. In my experience in working across New Zealand and working closely, obviously, with WoW and in Queenstown Lakes, is they are actually more conscious of the issues at hand than than many other councils. So they actually have a very good waste and recycling process tracking side of things. A lot of other councils, like I've done a little work in Wellington, but nothing. No consideration at all, really. So they are the care and consideration is there, but again, like those changes have to come from from somewhere else. But I also think because they are conscious of it and the care and understanding is there, they'll probably be more open to having facilities, funding facilities, or assisting in the funding of facilities or the construction of facilities or fast-tracking facilities that would actually help with the reduction of timber waste and looking at ways of recycling. And I know for a fact that we as a group, and the fact that Queenstown Lakes are a you know an active member of the better building working group and are actively involved with WoW, they show are showing that they care and actually are involved as well. So that change is kind of coming from local government side, which is which is good.
SPEAKER_02So looking
ahead, this is a this is a big question, and everyone that I've asked a question sits there and ponders. And so looking ahead, what do you think a better system for managing timber and construction could better design consideration?
SPEAKER_00I think a review of 3604 is one well overdue. And uh, but I think along with that understanding of more efficient structural systems or solutions, fixing methodologies need to be explored. As well as actually the strength of timber. I think we're probably a little bit conservative around the strength of timber. So that's probably one place to look at. But then I think uh somehow developing, getting somebody to develop a mechanism for recycling treated timber or just using treated timber in an efficient, sustainable way is is probably the biggest thing that we could look to adopt or look to explore. And I mean there's lots of mechanisms that we could look at. Even just chipping treated timber for the use in furnaces and things like that. I know for a fact that there are companies and uh producers that do that, but not on a large enough scale to absorb all this waste. And I think the issues with places like Queenstown Lakes or any other regional cities or towns is access to these facilities up in Auckland or up in the North Island. Like there's a few more essentially like tread timber furnaces that are used to power factories. But, you know, we're not going to be shipping, carting tons and tons and tons and tons of timber waste to the North Island to burn. So looking at more regional solutions around that would be quite interesting. And I think as well, it's sort of on the timber suppliers and these timber structural solution providers, the likes of XLAMs and ProLams and, you know, the people that are using timber bits to make other product, it's probably on them to innovate in that sector and look at how they could use timber wastage a little bit more carefully, because I don't think they're quite in appreciation of how much there is in the in the general built environment.
SPEAKER_02So say say if you found a way to effectively uh chip treated timber and then put it into furnaces. Would it then, because of perception, would people be, you know, against it if you started using those things in furnaces for hospitals or schools or just because of the perception that treated timber gives off chemicals. Yeah. You know, perception is is as good as reality.
SPEAKER_00I think all it takes again comes down to education. If you just very clearly lay out that the smoke residue or whatever is treated with in a in a certain and particular way that's not harmful, then it puts people's minds at ease. And as long as there's evidence, then fine. But you can't just say we burn it, it's fine. You know, there has to be a bit of education around it for sure. And I think that's probably the that's probably the crux of all of this conversation and this issue at large is that there's just a lack of education and understanding around treated timber. And people are just like, you know, they just they just see it as the norm and just they see timber as being good, but they don't really appreciate that timber treated timber that you can't do anything with. Like once it those little offcuts, they stack up pretty quick.
SPEAKER_02And it's yeah, yeah. It's uh it's a you know, timber is a great product and it's sustainable, but it does have its limitation.
SPEAKER_00Uh I talked about that project that we did in in in Queenstown. It's a homestead project, and so throughout the course of construction we tracked all of the waste that went off site. And we had in total for that build 1.6 tons of waste that went to landfill. 1.3 tonne of that was just timber. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. That was a SIP construction build. That was that 9% of timber in the external walls. So there was significantly less than a standard build, but like that percentage of waste, which was just treated timber, was was pretty high. I guess the the flip side of that is because it was in the Queensland Lakes, they've got really good recycling mechanisms for a lot of other products, polystyrenees, hard plastics, that those sort of things, you know, they they have recycling mechanisms, so that helps reduce waste to landfill. But still, I was I was pretty shocked when I got those stats at the end of the build and saw that for treat of timber. I absolutely wasn't expecting that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, wow. Okay.
So from your perspective, if you could change one thing about how timber is currently used, handled, or disposed of within New Zealand, what would it be?
SPEAKER_01What would be the first, you know, thing that you think could be addressed in this area?
SPEAKER_00More conscious design decisions around timber structures would be the easiest one. And that is very, very easy to implement. You just have to offer a little bit deeper than the surface value of 3604. So that would, to me, would be the number one. In terms of disposal, it'd be nice to see somebody develop or research into development of some recycling mechanisms for treated timber. But then, and then around the treated timber side of things, I think we just need to be a bit smarter and and more conscious of what we're treating our timber with. You know, we're one of the only countries in the world that still treats timber with copper carbon and arsenic. With poison, poison, poison. Like I've said for a couple of things here, you know, the framework's already there, the knowledge and understanding's there internationally. We just need to maybe move on from what is the established norm now and adopt a few more of these international systems and understandings. Um otherwise we're just gonna keep lagging from a from a sustainability point of view and just keep being pretty detrimental to our built environment.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02And eventually it's just gonna cost us, really, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00There'll be a line in the sand where there is like no more. And if there's no development in the background that's going to counter that, then you know, you're chasing your tail pretty rapidly, and like you said, that ends up just costing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And it ends up being uh very ad hoc and not not systematically thought through.
SPEAKER_00That's an issue in New Zealand, is that we are a reactive, I'd say, and just in general, we're there we're a reactive nation. We're not proactive or that forward thinking en masse. So it would be nice to see a little bit more of that background development and understanding going into the sector for sure.
SPEAKER_02How difficult do you think these changes could be made on a from a regulation point of view?
SPEAKER_00In terms of making regulatory changes to take out harmful treatment of timber.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Difficult until there's a clear pathway to an alternative. Yep. But I don't think it's difficult to develop that pathway or to to provide the solution. It's already there. The the the blueprint's there internationally. But it's convincing policymakers to adopt that change that's probably the the toughest thing. And I'd say that their focus is very much in other places, and this is not this is an afterthought, if if a thought at all.
SPEAKER_02That's all that's all my question. It's been great.
SPEAKER_00Nice, man.
Just out of interest, what made you develop this line of questioning and and and look into this?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so well, my background before I started doing this masters is environmental science. So I did a bachelor's of environmental science and worked in Australia for essentially their version of Doc. When I moved to New Zealand and got into placemakers and just started understanding the building industry in general, even just at a placemakers site, the amount of waste that we were creating. And then you, you know, you expand out from that and see all the builders and how much waste they're producing. And through my work through, wow. So I'm doing it, I guess you could say they're sponsoring me, but I'm doing it on behalf of them to create a roadmap, a 30-year roadmap for them to start to see what that how they can actually make changes. My interest is is around waste in general in the building industry. It's like a couple of days ago, I took a train from Geelong to Melbourne and the eastern suburbs of Melbourne is just being built out constantly. You know, it's just flat land with paddock, so they've just got this endless area to build new developments.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just grow and grow and grow.
SPEAKER_02And the amount of waste that is just you can see it just blowing off these develop these huge developments that is just no one's taking care of it, it's just getting buried.
SPEAKER_00It'd be interesting to know what it's like internationally. I think uh reliance on timber construction maybe makes it slightly unique to our area, but it's not.
SPEAKER_01I've got I'll throw a few figures out there.
SPEAKER_02So worldwide, the building and construction sector accounts for 40% of global raw material consumption and about one-third of total waste, and close to forty percent of global CO2 emissions. So that's that's worldwide construction. And then you take into account habitat loss, yeah, the biodiversity loss because of that habitat loss, um, potential altering of waterways and watercourses.
SPEAKER_00I think that that desire for the new is a big issue. And I mean that that's that leads to the sprawl and this growth. Better adoption and understanding and adaptive reuse mechanisms, I think, will help go a long way to reducing that. I mean, there's nothing more sustainable than using a building or building fabric that's already there, but we seem to have a bit of a reluctance to do so. And I think a lot of that stems from wanting something new or thinking what's there is not is no good anymore. And in some cases that is the case, but you know, even if a building's got huge intrinsic issues, at least brownfielding that site has a lot of potential to it. We don't have to keep growing out, we can start to grow up as well.
SPEAKER_02Should we leave it that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.