The significance of green values is growing and customers are demanding more and more environmentally friendly products. Koskisen is an environmental conscious company and the results of lately made carbon footprint study are to be used to improve environmental factors at Koskisen.

Life cycle assessment analysis was made for two specified plywood products, uncoated KoskiStandard and coated KoskiCrown. Main objective of the analysis was to calculate the carbon footprint for those products. The carbon footprint calculations give the total amount of CO2 emissions that are caused during the product’s life cycle.

In this study the footprint calculation has done according to “cradle-to-gate” approach. This approach includes raw material, i.e. wood procurement, transportation to the mill and the manufacturing process until the product is packaged and ready for dispatching to the customer. The CO2 fixation to the wood and wooden products is being excluded from the study. This way it is possible to see environmental loadings of different materials and manufacturing phases.

Results

The calculations were made to big panels size of KoskiStandard and KoskiCrown in 9 mm thickness. The final results are excellent. One cubic meter of uncoated KoskiStandard has a carbon footprint of about 160 kgCO2-equivalents. KoskiCrown with coated surface has a “bigger” carbon footprint, about 230 kgCO2-equivalents. CO2-equivalent is a unit for comparing the radiative forcing of a greenhouse gas to CO2, i.e. CO2e is the amount of CO2 that would cause the same amount of climate impact as a given amount of another greenhouse gas. Density of the plywood is 680 kg/m3 and moisture content 7-12 %.