CBS Sunday Morning – Skyscrapers made out of wood – Cross-Laminated Timber is now made in the USA

In a forest in Southern Oregon, nature’s renewable skyscrapers — trees — may just provide a more sustainable answer.

As they grow, trees take carbon out of the atmosphere, and even after they’re harvested they store that carbon.

So Lone Rock Logging has decided to send some of its trees to a special mill that turns them into a new kind of "green" high-rise building block.

by Lee Cowan

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/living-the-high-life/

When Seattle architect Susan Jones built her wonderful little house out of Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) she had to order it from Canada; there was not a single architectural CLT plant in the entire United States This seemed so strange, in a country that prides itself on innovation and ingenuity and has such a huge forestry industry and so much wood. In the UK they were building high-rises and in Italy, thousands of earthquake proof CLT houses, but not in America.

It’s a shame, because CLT really is a dream material; as I have noted before, it’s made from wood, a renewable resource, it sequesters carbon, it is strong enough to replace wood and concrete in higher buildings, and right now, it helps use up some of the billions of board-feet of mountain pine-beetle infested wood that will rot if we don’t cut it and use it fast.

Lloyd Alter (@lloydalter)

Full Story: http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/cross-laminated-timber-now-made-usa.html