Hardwood Flooring’s Impact on Natural Resource Depletion

“Increasing wood fuel use, a carbon-neutral process, would lower the environmental impact of hardwood lumber manufacturing and increase its use as a green building material.”¹

With increased interest in the building industry in sustainable practices and environmental impact, the process and energy costs of producing hardwood flooring need to be examined. Every wood products manufacturing process has its price in both resource and energy costs.

For hardwood lumber, the green lumber is dried usually in conventional-type dry kilns. The heat sources used in these kilns are wood and fossil fuels. The majority of the hardwood lumber dried in the US uses wood from the milling process as the primary fuel source.

A study published in Wood and Fiber Science in July of 2008, titled “Environmental Impact of Producing Hardwood Lumber Using Life-Cycle Inventory,” reported that wood has two significant advantages over non-wood substitutes: Wood is carbon neutral and carbon can be sequestered.

Therefore, using wood as a fuel or in a finished wood product from hardwood lumber could be considered a sustainable practice. Other non-wood products do not have the benefits of a carbon-neutral product to use both as a fuel and a finished product.²

Summary of Green Building Research

While keeping in mind that energy use varies by region, wood species and fuels used in production, the goal of the study was to arrive at the most definitive carbon footprint for hardwood flooring.

Here are some relevant results of the study:³

• Sawing consumes the highest proportion of electricity in hardwood manufacturing. Thus, installing optimization equipment would lower electrical consumption by reducing errors during the sawing process. Thinner saws reduce electrical consumption and reduce the volume of green wood residue produced.
• Drying consumes the highest proportion of fuel. In this study, wood fuel accounted for 87% of the thermal energy used. Lowering overall energy consumption by upgrading or overhauling existing older and inefficient dry kiln facilities is indicated. Increasing on-site wood fuel consumption would reduce fossil greenhouse gases but increase other products, such as particulate emissions. Particulate emissions may be reduced by re-injecting fly ash.
• The region of production affects the environmental impact of this product; coal is the largest off-site material used for electrical power generation in the Northeast. Most power in the Pacific Northwest is produced from hydropower and then natural gas, while most power in the Southeast is produced from coal and uranium, just like the Northeast.
• Increasing the level of air drying lumber and percentage of air drying prior to kiln drying, especially for species where color is not a problem, would lower the amount of energy required for the drying process. Therefore, improving air drying methods would lower energy use while maintaining lumber quality and reducing the environmental impact of hardwood lumber.

The Mixed Benefits of Hardwood

Wood holds two ecological advantages over non-wood flooring products: Wood is carbon-neutral, and wood sequesters (stores) carbon.² Of course, wood lovers know and cherish other benefits, such as a pleasing scent, aesthetic beauty, and performance.

Many stakeholders may have purely visceral reasons for installing hardwood floors in homes adorned with environmental consideration.

However, hardwood lumber takes more energy to produce than softwood lumber. Hardwoods need longer drying times to prevent degrade, and because they are generally denser, they hold more water for the same volume of lumber. Hardwoods are also typically dried to a lower final moisture content (MC), 6 to 8% compared with 15 to 19% for softwoods, so kiln charges run longer.

Hardwood logs are also more likely to be sawn into high-grade lumber, which takes more saw cuts to break down each log, and more energy.²

The Wood Itself

Increasingly, flooring stakeholders are questioning the risks and rewards of using regular hardwood, engineered wood or bamboo flooring products. Different species are beginning to make a presence in the eco-flooring market as well.

However, really, the simplest answer is: All flooring options available for purchase contain very different performance properties due to the structural features of the materials and how they are produced.

Every natural wood species on Earth has specific properties which can be traced to the very cellular structure of every tree. Although this may seem daunting, it just requires that homeowners and builders inform themselves of the species-specific properties prior to purchasing and installing hardwood floors.

Engineered wood flooring combines 3-12 multiple ply layers that are cross layered, glued and pressed together. The inner core layers are usually either a hardwood or softwood plywood-type of material. The top surface is usually a thicker hardwood veneer wear layer, which is available in almost any wood species.

The top layer is glued and pressed on the top surface of the core layers. The process works, and so does the end result. However, even though engineered wood flooring is more resistant to higher moisture levels than traditional solid wood flooring, moisture content (MC) measurement is still important.

Bamboo is a grass, which is very different in terms of strength and performance properties than traditional solid wood flooring. Its cell structure differs from wood, and bamboo flooring strength depends on how it was harvested and how it was manufactured.

Bamboo flooring had no international manufacturing standard until ISO 21629-1 was published in 2021.

Because bamboo flooring products vary so much in how they’re made, MC measurement takes care, but it is still critical because bamboo flooring is susceptible to moisture-related problems if not installed at the correct MC levels.

Lowering the Carbon Cost of Hardwood Lumber

The authors of the 2008 study included specialized thermal processes in their assessment of how lumber production energy was used. Walnut steaming, facility heating, and cogeneration were examined because their energy use was significant.²

The same report goes on to recommend several energy-saving strategies to lower the carbon cost of hardwood lumber production:³

• Upgrade, or overhaul, older and inefficient dry kilns. Redesigning the progressive dry kilns common in Scandinavia for softwood lumber would also cut energy use at mills drying large volumes of the same hardwood species and thickness.
• Improve sawing practices, such as installing optimization equipment and using thinner saws.
• Increase air drying of lumber.

Moisture Content Management

As part of the hardwood flooring lifecycle, moisture content management helps to optimize eco-friendliness by ensuring that hardwood flooring lasts as long as possible. This can be 100 years if the wood flooring is properly installed and maintained. Talk about the ultimate return on investment, both environmental and financial.

Moisture content is the weight of the water in a piece of wood, expressed as a percentage of the wood’s oven-dry weight, and MC fluctuates with relative humidity (RH) levels. This is not a malfunction, but a natural imperative. However, it is crucial to assure that hardwood flooring does not contain excess moisture content.

A wood moisture meter is a handy and precise tool to measure hardwood moisture content. Technology provides a number of key features for the modern wood moisture meter. It can be programmed to account for species-specific wood density, and a pinless wood moisture meter can non-invasively assess moisture content up to three-quarters of an inch into the wood.

Assessors can assure maximum hardwood longevity by keeping a hand-held wood moisture meter in the utility drawer. That’s an answer that will carry beyond the building into environmental conservation as well.

Moisture Content (MC) & Longevity

Ultimately, conservation and limiting environmental impact in forestry-related products are ensuring that hardwood that has been processed for flooring or other building uses is maintained to achieve its maximum service life.

Hardwood flooring achieves its optimum longevity when its MC is well-managed both before and after installing the hardwood floors. As the relative humidity (RH) of the surrounding air fluctuates, so too does the MC of the wood flooring. This is a very natural dynamic process, but excessive MC in the hardwood flooring can cause future problems.

Using a wood moisture meter is the most practical way to measure and assess MC on the job. Users can purchase meters that are programmable and can program the wood species directly into the meter so that its MC reading truly reflects the actual MC of the flooring.

With today’s pinless wood moisture meter technology, the modern wood moisture meter can measure the flooring’s MC up to ¾” below the wood surface without doing any damage to a new or existing floor. Put simply, a wood moisture meter is a proactive tool for protecting hardwood flooring and helping it reach a long service life once installed.

In terms of environmental impact, well-maintained and properly installed, hardwood flooring can last for many years to come. Hardwood flooring is an option with enormous ecological future returns on investments.

1. Bergman, Richard D., and Scott A. Bowe. “Environmental Impact of Producing Hardwood Lumber Using Life-Cycle Inventory,” Wood and Fiber Science 40(3), July 2008, p. 448.
2. Ibid., p. 456.
3. Ibid., p. 457.

Last updated on October 7th, 2026