On an intuitive level, wood is a natural, renewable and recyclable building material - the basic criteria for sustainable development. On a scientific level, rigorous Life Cycle Assessments prove that wood has a lower environmental impact than any other building material. Building with wood depletes fewer natural resources, and contributes far less to global warming, acid rain, ozone depletion, landfill, and eutrification - artificial enrichment that causes algae blooms that harm waterways and their denizens.

So why build with anything but wood?

Wood's innate advantage is also its Achilles' heel: as a product of nature, wood is also part of her food chain. In short, wood is prone to biological attack. For structures that represent a significant investment - in many cases, people's most significant investment - durability is at least as important as sustainability.

But nature also holds the answer to protecting wood from insects and decay: borates.

In New Zealand, treating timber with borates has been standard practice for more than 50 years. There is virtually no remedial treatment industry there, and dry rot and borer attack have not been recorded in borate treated wood since the mid-1950s. Borates are also used for 85 percent of all wood-frame homes in Hawaii where building codes have required treated timber for new construction since 1985. In the mainland United States, where termites and decay cause more than three billion dollars of damage every year, the number of treatment plants using borates recently doubled to meet growing demand.

While industrially pre-treating wood with borates has become the industry standard in these trouble spots, the practice is now gaining acceptance worldwide. It's a matter of common sense: treating building components that are susceptible to degradation is more effective than paying for remedial protection year after year. Reason dictates that those treatments must also be safe for people and the environment over time.

To complete the understanding of borate-treated building materials' environmental impact, Borax is conducting a Life Cycle Assessment on its wood preservative products. The study - completed in early 2004 - catalogues resources and emissions associated with producing those preservatives, from mining borates to treating lumber and wood composites used for construction. These data give architects and builders the means to make informed decisions about building materials, and homeowners a better understanding of how their choices today affect the environment over time.