Green Cabinets: When Wood is Good
So you’re building or remodeling green, and you’re trying to decide what to do about the cabinets.
Scanning the requirements for various green building programs, you seem to have two choices. First, you can try to find cabinets made with Forest Stewardship Council certified wood from companies like Neil Kelly Cabinets. But if the company is not local, the packaging and shipping of these products may cut into their green-ness. Or you could try out agrifiber based cabinets, like Humabuilt Wheatcore Cabinets, which have arisen due to the demand for green cabinets.
Unfortunately, when faced with these choices, many before you have given up on the idea of green cabinets and gone for possibly cheaper, more convenient plain old wood cabinets from their nearby kitchen and bath dealer. If you find yourself in the same boat, chances are there’s a lesser known green option waiting for you there. Many large cabinet manufacturers across the country are certified as members of an extensive green program called KCMA-ESP.
- » See also: Glidehouse Homes Designed for Clean and Simple Green Living
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The Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association developed their Environmental Stewardship Program in 2006 to encourage cabinet makers to be more energy efficient and environmentally friendly in their manufacturing process. Included in the program are requirements to increase air quality by lowering the presence of formaldehyde, increasing energy efficiency in the manufacturing process, following recycling practices, and furthering community relations through local programs and charities.
Nearly 100 companies have jumped at the opportunity to join other green-minded companies in the KCMA-ESP program, like Quality Cabinets, which has turned its cabinet manufacturing into a zero-waste process. Quality Cabinets converted 50,000 tons of wood byproduct into fuel for facilities, eliminating 5,000 waste containers and decreasing their reliance on coal and natural gas. Every year, 16,000 tons of sawdust are converted into filler for pet bedding. Most impressively, they’ve reduced CO2 emissions by 350 tons a year, the equivalent of removing 58 cars from the freeways.
Despite the efforts of companies like Quality, members of the KCMA-ESP often find themselves on the outside looking in when it comes to green building programs. Although they are made from wood, the original renewable resource, the cabinets themselves are not considered green. Green building programs like LEED can only recognize final products, not the process of creating them, as green. Until major cabinet manufacturers remove all added urea-formaldehyde from their cabinets - something that Quality Cabinets has been researching and testing - they will not qualify for LEED credits.
If your goal is to build or remodel green, a cabinet in which the manufacturing process was held to strict green standards may be as important to you as one that is made from recycled materials. These are green cabinets that you don’t need to look very far to find.
What has been your experience with green cabinets or KCMA-ESP?
Photo by Lynn Davis
(Disclosure: Joel is the director of RSI Green for RSI Kitchen & Bath in St. Louis, MO, which sells the above mentioned Humabuilt Wheatcore Cabinets and Quality Cabinets.)
[...] 6. Your manufacturing practices do not affect LEED credits. While it is perfectly appropriate in your literature to highlight that you use a zero-waste, VOC free, daylit manufacturing facility, only the final product matters when it comes to LEED credits. So don’t cite the credit on reducing waste on the job site and then explain your zero-waste manufacturing process. The energy efficiency of your plant plays no part in the energy efficiency of the new building. This is not to say that your manufacturing practices aren’t extremely important to the environment, and consumers will want to know about them, but the USGBC doesn’t have a way to recognize them in particular green building projects. For more on this, read Green Cabinets: When Wood is Good. [...]
We are a major producer of cost-neutral hardwood plywood that uses a soy-based resin technology instead of urea formaldehyde adhesives. It’s called PureBond.
We are overwhelmed with homeowners who have read about PureBond but are frustrated when they ask their cabinet shop or builder about using it.
To resolve this, we’ve created the PureBond Fabricator Network, where people who make finished goods like cabinets, furniture, and fixtures can be listed and easily found. Here’s a link: http://www.cfpwood.com/PFN.aspx
If you know of any quality-oriented, green-minded shop that might be interested in being part of this, please let them know about it. We want to eliminate every possible barrier between people who want to invest their money into healthy, accountable home imporovements - while reducing their exposure to VOC’s and toxins. It should be a growing market area for a long time!
Thank you for info on cabinets. Can you tell me the toxic/chemical content used in creating thermofoil cabinetry. Formaldyhde? I’m renovating a whole kitchen and struggling to be sure I maintain as green as possible within budget and up against a deadline to choose. THANK YOU!!