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Providing sustainable plywood products has long been a focus here at Plyco. Striking a balance between industry-leading quality while not harming our natural environment is something at the front of our minds when looking to improve our range.
Previously, we’ve spotlighted a number of products we offer at Plyco that have very little environmental impact throughout their manufacturing and distribution life cycle — with some even having a positive environmental impact! However, with the new year upon us and keeping in line with the goals for our website design refresh, we wanted to make it easy for Plyco customers to identify which plywood products were the most environmentally friendly.
Today we are launching a brand new sustainable product collection page to make purchasing easier, and below you’ll find details on each of those products as well as information about our sustainability certifications.
Sustainable Plywood Products
Plyco’s Sustainably Sourced range of plywood contains some of the most popular and highly sought after plywood products. We’re confident that there’s an environmentally friendly product available for almost every need.
Birch Plywood
Birch is the crown jewel of the plywood world, so it might be a little hard to believe that something this high quality also has very little environmental impact, but it’s true! The environmentally friendly nature largely comes from how quickly birch trees are able to grow, as well as their abundance in Europe.
Plyco's Premium Birch Plywood
As they grow quickly, replacing and re-growing the trees utilised for Birch Plywood is a relatively easy process. This results in very little overall environmental impact, as harvesting the trees doesn’t hurt the region’s biodiversity.
Alongside many of its other benefits, which we’ve detailed previously, the sustainability of Birch Plywood is a major reason why it’s featured so heavily at Plyco. Birch Plywood is at the core of our Laserply, Decoply and Spotless Laminate collections, making those products environmentally friendly plywood options too.
European Poplar Plywood
Often celebrated for its unique visual appearance and ultra light board weight, European Poplar Plywood also boasts sustainability as one of its desirable aspects. Similar to Birch, Poplar trees are known to be fast growing, which is why they are often planted in public spaces to offer shade or to liven up the area. Poplar trees also have a supremely positive impact on the environment, so planting them and safely harvesting them for plywood can actually be beneficial to our natural landscape.
Plyco's European Poplar Plywood
Whether it’s our Premium Poplar Plywood, Laserply, or OSB variety, you can’t go wrong by utilising Poplar if sustainability is important to you.
Bamboo Plywood
Arguably the gold standard of sustainability when it comes to plywood, and possibly wood in general, is Bamboo. We’ve looked at its many sustainable qualities previously, dedicating entire posts to just how harmoniously Bamboo Plywood works with the environment.
In short, Bamboo grows ridiculously fast, even compared to the other species mentioned here. Part of the reasoning behind its rapid growth is that it's technically a grass. If left unchecked, Bamboo can actually begin to overgrow, which can result in a plethora of new problems. Harvesting it for use in Bamboo Plywood helps keep these areas in check, meaning you get a stunning product that is actively helping the planet in the process. Not many products can boast that!
Hoop Pine Plywood
Hoop Pine is always a highly recommended plywood option due to its exceptional finishing qualities, particularly if you’re looking for a Marine Plywood. From a quality standpoint you can’t go wrong, but this also extends to its sustainability.
A Hoop Pine plantation in Queensland
Every sheet of Hoop Pine Plywood sold by Plyco is sourced from plantations that are run sustainably. These plantations are designed to run on a cycle that allows the planting, growth and eventually harvesting of Hoop Pine trees without placing a strain on our natural environment. Additionally, Hoop Pine is a locally sourced product. Grown in Queensland, it has a major advantage of other plywood products as it makes a much shorter journey from plantation to Plyco compared to foreign products.
You can find a wide variety of Hoop Pine products at Plyco, including Marine Plywood and Laserply.
Radiata Pine Plywood
While not native to Australia, Radiata Pine brings its own unique eco-friendly aspects to the table. Like the other products we’ve mentioned, our Radiata Pine is 100% sustainably and responsibly sourced. The plantations these are sourced from have a unique place within the environment though.
Tree plantations can often have negative connotations attached to them, largely because it ultimately means trees will be cut down. However, these man-made Radiata Pine forests have been having numerous positive effects. Radiata Pine forests have been found to lower C02 emissions and help offset the use of fossil fuels. Additionally, these forests have become important homes for a number of native species.
Plyco's BC Radiata Pine Plywood
There are only five natural Radiata Pine forests left in the world, so these human-planted forests are helping to keep the species alive and thriving.
Some of the Radiata Pine Plywood products we stock at Plyco include our Laserply variety, as well as our CD Structural and Non-Structural Plywood, which is made from Radiata Pine.
What Makes Our Plywood Environmentally Friendly?
While we’ve only excluded a handful of our most sustainable and environmentally friendly products as part of Plyco’s Sustainably Sourced range, you’ll find that all of our plywood products are sourced in a responsible manner. Every product that Plyco stocks has a Forest Stewardship Council certification or a Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification.
What exactly do these certifications mean? Well, both the FSC and PEFC analyse the entire pipeline of how plywood is sourced, determining whether it is being required responsibly and isn’t devastating our natural environment. To gain this certification they analyse the practices used and analyse whether the source of the plywood is sustainable.
One of Plyco’s non-negotiables when looking at introducing new product types and ranges is whether they are eco-friendly. If our resources can’t be sourced ethically we won’t stock them in our stores. Our team of plywood professionals recognise how important it is to respect our natural world and we understand just how important this is to our customer’s in this day and age.
A Birch Plywood plantation
If you’d like to browse our entire collection of sustainable plywood you can check out the range here.
