Since its inception in 1996, the nonprofit Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM; www.corrim.org) has developed comprehensive environmental performance information on wood building materials consistent with International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards for life-cycle inventory (LCI) and life-cycle assessment (LCA) research. The majority of prior CORRIM work on structural wood products has been published in two special issues of Wood and Fiber Science (CORRIM 2005, CORRIM 2010) based on data collected and analyzed starting in 1999.

Many changes that were likely to affect the life-cycle results have occurred since the

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In commemorating almost anything, it can be easy to forget what came before the event celebrated. In the case of the Committee on Renewable Resources for Industrial Materials (CORRIM) or, more accurately CORRIM II, the roots are deep, extending at least back to 1970. This report chronicles the events leading up to the creation of the original CORRIM effort, outlines the early history of CORRIM II, and includes observations regarding future directions. The story begins around the time of the first Earth Day, involves a congressionally authorized initiative focused on industrial raw materials that largely ignored renewables, leads to action by the wood science and technology community to include consideration in federal policymaking of wood and agriculturally derived material, and results in the formation of CORRIM I. After a period of several decades during which raw material issues loom progressively larger, the story resumes with the reengagement of the wood science community concurrent with development of a new environmental impact evaluation tool—life-cycle assessment—and concludes with incorporation of CORRIM II in 1996. The end of the story, however, is also the beginning, with much already accomplished but much yet to be done.

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Life-cycle inventory (LCI) and life-cycle assessment (LCA) were used to provide quantitative assessments of the environmental impacts of forest management activities that are required to produce feedstock for wood products such as lumber, engineered panels, and pulp. Primary and secondary data were gathered for the Pacific Northwest Douglas-fir region of the United States to produce an attributional LCA that includes planting, growing, and harvesting trees that are destined for use in wood manufacturing. Using the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts (TRACI) method, under average management conditions, forest operations can expect to generate from 10 to 18 kg CO₂ equivalent (CO₂ eq) per cubic meter (m³) of logs ready to leave the landing for the manufacturing facility, depending on the amount of forest residues that are piled and burned. This same cubic meter of log plus bark will have sequestered 960 kg CO₂ eq during its growth cycle, for a net greenhouse gas sink of 942 to 950 kg CO₂ eq per m³. Forest management impacts are from 1 to 13 percent of the total impacts from the cradle to gate for global warming potential and the potential to increase smog, eutrophication, and acidification. Upstream impacts associated with the production of herbicides are reflected in the ozone potential impact category. These LCA results can be used as upstream processes for wood manufacturers interested in developing Environmental Product Declarations for products that use these resources as inputs.

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A cradle-to-gate life-cycle inventory was done for 2 by 4 to 2 by 12 dimension lumber produced from logs in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and Southeast (SE) regions of the United States. Seven mills in the PNW and 11 mills in the SE provided data for 2012 lumber and coproduct production, raw material and fuel use, electricity consumption, and on-site emissions. The mills represented 17 and 11 percent of the production volumes in the regions, respectively. Five processes existed within the mill, log yard, sawing, drying, planing, and energy generation. Data for the first four processes came exclusively from the survey. The functional unit was 1 m³ of planed dry wood. Data for energy generation were based on a nationwide wood boiler survey that included PNW lumber mills. The cradle-to-gate processing energy in the PNW region was 3,434 MJ/m³ of planed, dry lumber, 96 percent of which is owing to log transport and wood processing. The value was higher, 5,151 MJ/m³, for the SE region in part owing to a higher initial wood moisture content. In each region, more than 70 percent of the energy is from bio-based residuals with less than 30 percent from fossil sources. The global warming impact indicator is 58.7 kg CO₂ eq per m³ in the PNW and 81.4 kg CO₂ eq per m³ in the SE, of which 85 percent is a result of log transport and processing. Planed, dry lumber from the PNW region stores 856 kg CO₂ eq per m³ compared with 935 kg CO₂ eq per m³ for lumber from the SE region. The coproducts, emissions, and material and energy inputs are further discussed in this article.

CORRIM: Forest Products Life-Cycle Analysis Update Overview

CORRIM: The 20th Anniversary That Was More Than 40 Years in the Making*

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A Life-Cycle Assessment of Forest Resources of the Pacific Northwest, USA*

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Life-Cycle Assessment for the Cradle-to-Gate Production of Softwood Lumber in the Pacific Northwest and Southeast Regions*

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Cradle-to-Gate Life-Cycle Assessment of Laminated Veneer Lumber Production in the United States*

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Cradle-to-Gate Life-Cycle Assessment of Composite I-Joist Production in the United States*

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Cradle-to-Gate Life-Cycle Impact Analysis of Glued-Laminated (Glulam) Timber: Environmental Impacts from Glulam Produced in the US Pacific Northwest and Southeast*

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Life-Cycle Assessment for Wood-Fired Boilers Used in the Wood Products Industry*

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Impacts of the Allocation Assumption in Life-Cycle Assessments of Wood-Based Panels*

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Role of Online Survey Tools in Creating Temporally Accurate Environmental Product Declarations within the Context of the US Wood Products Industry*

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Regional Drivers of Primary Wood Processing Mills in the Western Southeast US

Shear and Bending Properties of Homogeneous and Hybrid CLT Panels Fabricated from Low-Value North American Hardwood Species

Impact of Market Price Fluctuations on the Break-Even Log in Hardwood Sawmills

Tourists’ Pro-Environmental Behavior in Forest-Based Tourism through Multi-Methods Analysis

Effect of Decoration Complexity and Age on Aesthetic Evaluation, Purchase Intention, and Visual Attention in Wood Furniture

Moisture Content, Specific Gravity, and Percent Foliage Weight of Cottonwood Biomass

Using Life-Cycle Assessments to Demonstrate the Impact of Using Wood Waste as a Renewable Fuel in Urban Settings for District Heating

Decay Hazard (Scheffer) Index Values in Korea for Exterior Aboveground Wood

Effect of Setting during Construction on Properties of Douglas-Fir Plywood and Oriented Strandboard Flooring

Study on Urea-Formaldehyde Prepolymer and Hot-Press Treatment of Italian Poplar Wood