Building Materials Made of Wood Waste a Solution to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

In order to reduce the impact of human activities on the environment, in 2015, the United Nations launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, proposing 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 associated targets. It is well-known that the construction industry is a major contributor to global CO2 emissions, and if a solution to reduce construction activity is not possible, considering the increasing population, then other solutions must be developed to decrease their negative environmental impact. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the use of wood waste as a building material can be a solution to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The research procedure included a bibliometric literature search, a scientometric analysis and an in-depth discussion. The analysis was done with the help of the software VOSviewer and Bibliometrix; the data were extracted mainly from the ISI Web of Science database. The extraction of data was done using the PRISMA method, and thus a sample of 212 peer-reviewed journal articles was established. The main results indicate an increasing interest in this topic in the last several years, as well as a switch from considering wood waste as just a source to generate heat and energy to the use of wood waste as a building material. The main uses of wood waste as a building material are in the composition of particleboards and in various mortar and concrete mixtures. The field of wood waste has many potential directions towards future development, and if the immense treasure represented by the forests, and implicitly the wood, is used efficiently, it can be a good solution to the problem of sustainable development of society.