Productizing carbon footprint and handprint for wood construction

Abstract

The construction industry is recognized as one of the leading industries contributing significantly to carbon footprint creation. While the footprint concept is utilized for negative environmental impacts, handprint is a new topic, ‎which refers to positive environmental impacts that businesses can gain and communicate by offering goods and ‎services that reduce customers’ footprints. This thesis aims to study methods that promote low-carbon construction with a small carbon footprint but a large carbon handprint. For that goal, wooden construction was chosen as a highly promising solution for creating carbon handprints and reducing the carbon footprints of construction.

The study combines a literature review and qualitative analysis of empirical data collected from two companies and one specialist. This study first reviewed the literature to identify the critical elements of carbon handprint and footprint in general and wooden construction. Then data is gathered through semi-structured interviews to study the potential of wooden buildings in decreasing the construction carbon footprint and increasing construction handprint. This study applies the Gioia method for data analyses.

Findings show that the construction industry has a lot of carbon footprint elements, such as materials, energy, transportation, and supply chain. Results show that wood products are beneficial to the environment, businesses and customers. Also, the critical role of centralized product data and the systematization of sales items in reducing carbon emissions in wooden construction is demonstrated. We conclude that carbon footprint and handprint could be productized, decrease carbon footprint and increase carbon handprint via replacing footprint sources with sustainable materials, energy, construction processes, transportation, and supply chains in the construction industry.