Bridging life at home and sustainable production [Elektronisk resurs]

• Dr Saara Taalas and Dr Dick Sandberg presented the relevance of looking in more detail the consumption patterns that will influence relationships with material culture. The consumption patterns change over time suiting to everyday life of that time at a locality. For instance, in Nordic countries, the same forests that served livelihood of people in the past are now important centres for recreation- a change of dimension from livelihood to sports. Thus, the relations with forests have dramatically changed. Many people are now secondary stakeholders (using its products) than directly depending on it for livelihood as people did 100 years ago. The same happened to the relation with the material originating from the forests. For instance, in Sweden firewood dominated harvest from forests (40%) in 1900, but is less than 8 % now. On the contrary, pulpwood that was just 5 % of the harvest in 1900 constitutes now 44 %. Only sawmilling remained relatively the same. Visions for Finnish bio economy business levels reflect the increasing relevance of living trees and bio-energy in future. The wood products will be there but the requirements will change- from volume to specific requirements on properties (e.g. shape stability). The tactile of part of wood see more money but the traditional paper and pulp products are likely to lose its relevance in Northern Europe because of high prices, changing markets and long rotation of forest trees.Thus, the pulp mills diversify with new products (e.g. textiles). Innovation in new processes will drive ways for new wood use in future (e.g. polymers and chemicals, bioenergy etc). Prioritising purpose will determine wood’s value. For example, using wood for bioenergy (which gains relevance in Northern Europe) might negatively influence many other business levels. Increasing business value should be given emphasis as trees could be sold 100 times through process innovations. 

Indexterm och SAB-rubrik

Forestry

agricultural sciences and landscape planning - Wood fibre and forest products

Skogs- och jordbruksvetenskap samt landskapsplanering - Träfiber- och virkeslära