The Finnish Answer to Environmentally affordable housing

Can wood bonded with plastic be an environmentally sustainable long lasting construction material?

The Finnish Construction company UPM says it can. According to their website ' UPM leads the integration of bio and forest industries into a new, sustainable and innovation-driven biofore industry.' The Finnish company has developed a new type of composite material called UPM Profi. UPM uses a mixture of surplus paper and plastic leftovers from production. These leftovers can be found anywhere in the world, which means that the production process can be started anywhere with no high transportation costs. According to the company the material is a perfect combination of wood fibers and plastic. After use the material can be put back into the production process which means that there will hardly be waste materials. All residues are used as raw material for new products. So we know there is hardly any environmental damage in the production process or even after because the building material can be recycled. But it gets even better because ' there is no need for annual staining, varnishing or other labor intensive maintenance.' In other words, the maintenance cost is almost nothing because it does not need any work or materials in order to maintain the product. The material has all the positive characteristics of wood and will not need all the maintenance that wood often needs. The material can be held together by 'cladding'. Cladding is making a connection between the components by pressing the UPM Profi to the carrying material. The advantage is that you do not need any nails, screws or any other connection material.How flexible is the building material?What can you build with wood plastic composite? The original idea to use the building material was for outdoor use in garden decks, patios, terrace areas, marinas and boardwalks. But the company has shown some examples of other things that you can do with it, for example building homes. So far the company has only shown possibilities of what you can do with this composite but the ideas are remarkable. The Japanese architect Shigeru Ban used his architectural abilities on the Milano Salone Internazionale del Mobile exhibition by using UPM Profi, as well as at other expositions. Currently his design is being used as a mobile exhibition room.

So the possibilities seem to be endless. From etiquettes to exhibition rooms to futuristic designs.But how suitable is this material for Enviu's OS-House?We do not know the building costs of a house yet because there has not been any standardization but the material is made of waste material which means that there are not high costs associated with construction. However we do not know how expensive it is to locally build a factory that can make UPM Profi.UPM Profi is flexible and since it has the structure of wood, it will be adjustable to the local design styles. Of course we are only talking about the 'basic construction' but the amazing thing about this material is that furniture and floors can be made of it as well!Another interesting part is that UPM is trying to put as little pressure on the environment as possible. UPM puts high priority on recycled very durable material and low transportation costs.The concept is definitely interesting for Enviu and we will follow this company's developments.

Douwe Wieberdink