Green case study part 2: MDF

In the last post I talked about how, even if the materials are recycled, the product is not necessarily “green” if, for instance, it sucks down an immense amount of energy from conventional oil/coal/other environmentally disastrous energy technology. Utilizing alternative energy sources like solar, wind or geothermal power to process the materials and manufacture product would help maintain a robust “green” label for a product.

Another factor in deciding what’s actually “green” is what I’ve come to think of as the “secret ingredient” or “magic wand” that transforms recycled waste into new useful product.

As I mentioned before, MDF is a marvelous building material for certain applications because of its stability, strength and the ease with which it can be machined.

So what do they add to shredded, pulped wood fiber to make it into an ultra durable building material? What’s the binder? What makes it work?

The dirty secret of MDF production has been the use of urea and formaldehyde as binders. Both are carcinogenic, and each have additional nasty health side effects.

When MDF is cut, shaped or sanded, the resulting dust is extremely fine and easily absorbed/inhaled deeply. If the dust is saturated with toxins, imagine how much more of a hazard working with MDF poses. I know from years of furniture making that MDF dust is light, fluffy and easy to snort up your nose even when wearing masks or respirators because it hangs around your hair, clothes, etc.

At any rate, you see my point about researching the technologies behind new wonder products for the green design market, because there might be some scary toxin(s) hidden in the manufacturing process.

And if you think it doesn’t matter if you don’t work with it, think again. The engineered wood industry (and a lot of other people) are all coming to grips with the notion of interior air quality and “emissions” from chemicals (used in the manufacturing process) into the air (as materials break down) over time.

This means chemicals, some of them known (at least in California) to cause cancer, regularly release into the air you breathe inside your home, hotel room or favorite restaurant from your chair, cabinet or crown moulding–

rembering that the ability to cheaply machine MDF into massive decorative architectural shapes, mouldings, baseboards, raised panel doors, wall panels, and anything else that designers can think of means that MDF is everywhere around us, especially in the hospitality industry.

A real “green” building solution to this dilemma would be to make MDF without the cancerous agents as binders and I am pleased to report that the US has (at least) two companies providing real solutions in this niche– I will write about them in the next design post, along with another engineered wood company who is on to the same thing.

Because the urea/formaldehyde issue affects more than just MDF, but also the plywood, oriented strand board, particle board (hello Ikea) and engineered wood flooring (Pergo, Tundra and the like) areas of the market and ultimately the entire spectrum of home/hospitality design & furnishings based businesses.

I believe there are similar issues with uphosltery fabrics and fillers, but its beyond my scope here, which begins and ends as a picture frame maker. Why do we care about all this MDF/emmissions/formaldehyde talk?

There’s not much wood in a picture frame anyway.

There are two reasons why we at The Frame Maker care about the “green” issues being discussed here.

1. We care about our own health and yours.

2. If the “wood” in your frame is slowly polluting the atmosphere outside the frame, what do you think is happening inside the frame?

Framers have been sealing regular wood frames for decades to prevent the migration of acids/tannins from the wood of the frame into the art package, now we have to consider that the use of composite materials for picture frames may expose the art to harmful substances as well as art handlers.

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Green case study part 1: MDF

To try and get a handle on all the facets of being green when it comes to interior design, building materials, and the like, I decided to explore a material widely used in interior finishing work, furniture manufacture and more recently in custom framing as well: medium density fiber board, known mainly as MDF.

At the HD Expo, I stopped to speak with one contract framer who had a US Green Building Council  Certificate up on their booth and some other “green” group signage– I don’t remember what exactly, because of their response to my question: “So what green products do you offer for our (art & framing) industry?”.

The salesman held up a frame corner sample made of MDF with a silver foil finish, claiming it was a green product. When I asked what else made them a “green company”, he had nothing else to say.

When I pressed, his claim for MDF being green rested mainly on the idea that MDF is a “recycled” product, utilizing either post-consumer waste or wood industry by-products in its manufacture. Further, he couldn’t tell me where the MDF came from (company or country) or how it was actually made or how much of it actually came from recycled raw materials. (Most people are probably familiar with the phrase “Contains 30% recycled content”, or 40% or more, when discussing paper products like coffe cups or newsprint).

Now, even if the “recycled content” claim were true, there are several other factors to consider when determining if a building product is green. I will look into these considerations over the next couple of posts; for now lets discuss MDF and how green it may be in terms of its origins and manufacture.

A little research shows that the preferred  raw material for MDF is wood fiber, properly prepared from virgin trees. Most commonly used are fast growing softwoods like the radiata pine used in Australian and New Zealand manufacture of MDF. These trees are raised on plantations like Christmas trees, harvested and replanted in rotation to ensure a steady supply of ready-to-use logs.

Well managed forests and plantations are definitely the foundation of a sustainable wood product industry, its important to distinguish between the use of virgin materials and recycled materials in the discussion of what’s green.

One reason for this is that there is a considerable amount of waste in the wood industry and it makes sense to put this waste to work in engineered wood products like plywood, particle board, oriented strand board and MDF. If these products are not being made from waste, where does the waste go?

A second reason is the amount of energy consumed in the manufacture of these products. For instance, if we follow a fresh log on its path to becoming MDF, there is a considerable amount of energy consumed by:

1. The “debarking” process, where a machine peels away the bark from the log.
2. The chipper that grinds our log up into small pieces.
3. The “plugging and heating” of the chips that prepares them for the next stage,
4. Where the wood fibers are actually stripped apart by a “defibrator”.
5. Next the fibers are injected with resin and wax in a “blowline”, which processes the fibers with more heat at high velocity so that they will
6. Bond together consistently in an oscillating “pendistor”.
7. The homogenized mass leaves the pendistor to be pressed flat into sheets under high pressure.
8. The pressed sheets are then trimmed and sanded for final delivery.

Imagine the amount of electricity or other fuels required for this manufacturing process– only a small amount can be supplied by waste products from the process (for example, the bark can be burned to heat the fibers) and so must come from other fuels.

Why go through all this?

As a builder and furniture maker as well as picture framer, I know that MDF has wonderful capabilities unavailable in other products: large sheets that are perfectly true, stable, won’t warp, takes paint and laminates with ease, and are consistent from batch to batch.

To produce modern furniture and case work, especially in the volume demanded by hospitality and contract work, MDF is a godsend and its many uses certainly (from the furniture maker’s point of view) ought to justify the energy expended in its manufacture.

As a picture framer I have my doubts, since picture frame moulding is generally speaking long thin strips (similar to the natural shape of trees), what could there to be gained from going through all of this effort to produce big perfect sheets of MDF just to turn around and cut them into the little pieces required for framing?

Maybe if the sheets were 100% recycled and most of the electricty/heat required for processing was generated from wind and solar power, I could get excited about MDF as a “green” product.

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So what is green, actually?

Green is certainly a complicated issue when it comes to the necessities of serving lots of people at once.Acres of carpet, hundreds of chairs and bedframes, thousands of linens, window coverings and picture frames are just a small part of the resources consumed in creating a successful hospitality project. Hospitality design almost seems wasteful by definition.

But these projects are happening regardless, so the answer to “green” must be somewhere in reuse and recycle. Designers and architects in hospitality who are leading the way on green issues make great “adaptive” reuse of existing structures and building components and spec recycled materials. 

This solution is hedged on certain sides with specific challenges; maybe the existing building shell configuration is very inefficient in terms of energy usage, utilization of daylight and insulation. Or maybe the amount of energy it takes to recycle one thing into another is far greater than just “getting a new one”. 

Is solar, wind or energy from other self renewing source immediately available and accesible to a specific building? Or do I have to invest $50,000 plus to get green energy in my building and use up a bunch of resources in the process? 

These kinds of considerations keep conscious business owners awake at night, and don’t even take into account a whole other side of the “green” discussion, which is how these design decisions affect the end users, client, customer, guest whatever you want to call him or her. (We’ll use “client”).  

What about that moldy HVAC system pumping chilled air through your room in Vegas which should otherwise be *baking* 14 stories up under the desert sun? What about the deterioration and emision of certain chemicals used in the manufacture of hospitality products, (carpets for example, or drapes) and its impact on the interior air quality of your room? 

The health considerations of green thinking are enormous when you consider the sheer number of people clustered in hotels, restaurants, malls, casinos and other operating hospitality businesses, using those facilities to “live” (that is eat, sleep, eliminate and otherwise enjoy themselves) day after day after day.  

In the next post I’ll do an example, a consideration of a product used throughout the building, construction and hospitality related industries, picture framing included.

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Green hospitality design?

(Disclaimer: you’re not allowed to take pictures at this show unless you are “official” press, which I am clearly not, so there won’t be any pictures in these posts.)

If I could have take pictures inside the hall at the HD Expo this weekend, I could show you several very cool products developed to meet the needs of hotel, restaurant, casino and resort designers and developers.

There are so many products claiming the “green design” tag that it seems to demonstrate that the demand has grown huge for green products, no matter what the cost premiums associated with “going green”.

After all, hospitality design is all about multiples, huge multiples, and when you think about the natural resources that could be consumed simply in creating chairs, linens, carpets, mirrors and art for the estimated 6 million new hotel rooms (and the buildings to house them) estimated to be built just in the United States by 2030, it would seem a logical place for an environmental conservation mindset to take root.

But, as we as contract framers well know, large multiples means large dollar amounts and therefore a heavy emphasis on conserving the cost per unit and the costs of delivery when it comes to hundreds or thousands of chairs, linens bedframes or picture frames, and the overwhelming consensus of design professional I’ve spoken to agree that much of the time, cost has been the over riding factor in hospitality industry design decisions.

As someone who has always attempted to walk the walk when it comes to energy conservation and material recycling simply as a matter of personal responsibility, but who has worked in notoriously NOT green industries like entertainment construction, picture framing and custom painting, I find it very encouraging that the need for green design has finally seeped down into the design industry decision making consciousness.

Because the people at this how wouldn’t be supplying it if there wasn’t significant demand.

And one of the most powerful aspects of the hospitality industry is that it creates significant demand by virtue of its very size.

In the next post I’ll start talking about more specifics of what I learned here at the HD Expo about how green design can work itself out in the hospitality design industry, what it could mean specifically to the art and framing business, and to The Frame Maker in particular.

This hopeful thought hovers around the edge of the conversation: perhaps the good “green” example set by destinations like hotels, restaurants and resorts could help spread a greener consciousness as guests return home not just with entertaining experiences and fond memries, but also a practical demonstration of green living, or green design in action.

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@ Hospitality Design Expo

In attending the Hospitality Design Expo this weekend on behalf of The Frame Maker, we as a shop are trying to get a clearer picture of where the hospitality industry is headed, not just as it relates to our own contract framing services, but what’s happening for our professional client base, including many members of the San Diego chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers, who have a booth in the show tomorrow through Saturday in the Sands Expo center behind the Venetian.

Today I attended a few components of HD Expo’s “Green Day” event, which focussed on many specific developments in environmentally friendly practices & products for the hospitality industry. I was struck by several points today, and I’m going to start with the last one and probably most significant one, emphasized repeatedly by keynote speaker Danny Seo, is that so-called “green design” is not just another trend.

Rather, the realities of the global economy and our growing awareness of the impact of our activities on the environment, and what that means for our own heath and well-being (as well as that of future generations), are creating demand in the marketplace for green design and green products.

A lot of numbers got thrown around today, but a more significant and fundamental idea is that the consumer audience that cares about green issues is generally willing to pay more for an organic or green product. As this demographic grows and their demand grows, higher prices for ecologically sound practices and products should be met by increased supply as the more entrepreneurial of our citizens see economic and business opportunity in providing green services and products.

Of course, many of these new products aimed for the hospitality industry are featured at the Expo, so I will continue on this subject tomorrow.

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