Climate change is already reshaping our world. Replacing fossil-based materials with wood from sustainably managed forests can help cut emissions and store carbon for generations. The Grow the Solution campaign envisions a future where renewable wood products power everyday life and support a lower-carbon world. Choose renewable wood products over fossil-based alternatives – and help spread the word about a more sustainable future.
Sustainably sourced wood is one of nature's most powerful climate solutions. Trees absorb and store carbon as they grow, and when timber is used in long-life products such as buildings and furniture, the carbon is locked away for decades. Biodegradable and renewable, wood and wood-based products can also replace more emissions-intensive materials like steel, cement and single-use plastics. When forests are responsibly managed, new trees regrow and the cycle continues.
Imagine using sustainably grown wood in ways you might not expect – clothes woven from wood fibre like viscose and lyocell, engineered timber instead of concrete and steel in buildings, transparent windowpanes made from wood, or even biodegradable wooden satellites. This isn't science fiction – it's a rapidly expanding reality that shows how wood-based solutions can lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Are you doing extraordinary things with wood? We want to hear from you. From makers, architects and engineers to artists, designers and students – we're looking for anyone using sustainable wood in surprising, inventive or inspiring ways.
We want to meet designers pushing sustainable wood into unexpected places, engineers building with mass timber, artists finding stories in the woodgrain, and students testing ideas that could change how we build, live and think about forests. Each Wood Champion brings something different – a technique, a perspective, an occupation – but they share a belief that sustainable wood is one of the most powerful tools we have for tackling the climate crisis.
We'll feature a new Wood Champion each month on the Grow the Solution website. Stay tuned for more on how to apply!
Not everyone knows just what wood can do for the planet and our future.
Grow the Solution is a global awareness campaign of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests Communicators’ Network Joint Initiative to show that forests and wood can be an answer to the world’s numerous challenges. Our slogan says it plainly: the solution to climate change, to housing shortage, to pollution, may be growing right outside your window.
With the support of
