As long as you have purchased your wood from sustainable sources, you are actually helping the environment by heating your home with wood instead of gas or electricity.
Wood is a renewable bioenergy. It is recommended that environmentally aware wood users either buy their wood from FAA members or collect it from permitted areas.
Collecting wood from roadsides and reserves can remove the protection it affords some wildlife, exposing it to predators such as feral cats and foxes.
A CSIRO study in 2003 showed that firewood is virtually greenhouse neutral and is a useful way to reduce the carbon pollution from gas and coal energy use.
The Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council’s Firewood Taskforce has defined seven environmentally acceptable sources for sustainable firewood:
- Logging residues from sustainably managed forests and plantations.
- Residue or by-product from sawmilling or other wood processing operations supplied by sustainably managed forests and plantations.
- Wood collected from forest or woodland under government authorisation.
- Wood collected on private property under formal management plans or environmental guidelines.
- Wood from agroforestry, planted shelterbelts, planted windbreaks or waste timber.
- Salvage of waste timber from approved harvesting on private or public land.
- Recycled or waste timber from tree lopping, building demolition or urban salvage.
Firewood from any of these seven sources is accepted as complying with the Code of Practice.
But will we run our of wood in the future? The answer to this question is definitely no. In some parts of the world and in earlier times mankind has totally cleared the landscape of trees.
In Australia, as in most developed countries, the area under forests is now actually increasing. Human activities will undoubtedly change the nature and type of forest, but most governments now recognise the value of this renewable resource.
On private land plantations targeted to produce firewood are increasing. For the time being though, the last 14 years of drought have resulted in an enormous number of trees dying in the lower rainfall regions. This will provide a secure supply of quality firewood for many years.
Every year more trees die and are replaced with new ones and while we continue to plant them they will continue to grow and provide a sustainable source of energy and carbon collection.
