For the people of today, building with timber is becoming more and more synonymous with natural and sustainable building. In the socio-political context, timber is connected with the outlook of achieving nearly closed material and energy cycles and being able to make a maximum contribution towards addressing the challenges of climate change.

As a model for sustainability and the environment, the use of timber in construction has a number of convincing arguments:

• The forests in Europe are an inexhaustible source of raw material for building with timber.
• In addition to its raw material function, the forest displays numerous sustainable environmental effects.
• Forests and wood are a powerful option to combat climate change.
• Wood as a renewable building material can replace the non-renewable building materials of limited availability.
• Wood can be re-used as a material at all stages of production and processing.
• Wood lightens the burden for landfill spaces due to its ability to be recycled.
• Building with wood already meets crucial sustainability requirements during the construction phase.
• Wooden buildings can be created in a way which is gentle to the earth, efficient in terms of materials, and which uses little energy.
• During their use, wooden buildings are characterised by superior energy efficiency.
• Wooden buildings are durable and can be flexibly adapted to changing intentions for use.
• Wooden buildings can be recycled at the end of the life cycle in the natural cycle of substances.
• Timber constructions prove to be superior in important environmental parameters over other building materials.