Inside America's mass timber movement

Mass timber is a type of wood being used to build large buildings, like high-rises and airports. Jeff Glor traveled to Oregon to understand more about the material, its safety, and whether it's sustainable to use long-term.

"CBS Saturday Morning" co-hosts Jeff Glor, Michelle Miller and Dana Jacobson deliver two hours of original reporting and breaking news, as well as profiles of leading figures in culture and the arts. Watch "CBS Saturday Morning" at 7 a.m. ET on CBS and 8 a.m. ET on the CBS News app.

[quisp]

It is such a relief to know that there a still people out there making beautiful things.

[addanametocontinue]

I don't like cutting down large patches of trees, either. But I'll be hard-pressed if you're trying to tell me that making buildings out of trees is somehow worse for the environment than steel and concrete. Steel and concrete involve a lot of energy and resources to produce. Timber... that literally grows on trees and requires a lot less effort to prepare.

[KushPatel]

I live in the building in Milwaukee. Love it. The wood adds so much warmth and character to our unit

[KetaVancouver]

Those are not clearcuts, those are cut blocks. Timber is 100% renewable and sustainable, while steel is not and concrete is INCREDIBLY water-intensive.
Its not about "how high" can a mass timber structure go, its about the elimination of need for structural supports at regular intervals (like the steel in a concrete building) because the CLT wood itself has structural properties.
So building with mass timber allows for more open space, flexibility with the layout. Thats why it is used for community centres, museums, and such, this airport in Portland etc.

[danbarrette]

I’ve been a wildland firefighter for many years. Some years take me to Oregon, Washington and Northern California. The amount of trees lost to old age and or the environment needs to be witnessed. Selective cutting is a great way to save forest. Idaho and Montana also have some great forest. Working closely with the US Forest Service we enter some extremely protective areas where we cannot start any type of motor (chainsaw). This country could diversify more in the building materials used.

[keeganschock]

Architecture student here! I’m wrapping up my 4th year now, took a class entirely dedicated to mass timber and have used mass timber on almost half of my school projects. This comment section is fantastic, I love that this isn’t being politicized and that you all have done your homework. The class I took allowed me to see this stuff through every phase of its production. We visited a sustainable forest (where the workers are passionate and competent about ecological conservation), a sawmill where the dimensional lumber is cut and dried, and a mass timber production plant, and finally multiple mass timber buildings that are either completed or under construction on my campus (University of Arkansas). This stuff is really only at its infancy, the next new decades will take it to incredible places. I was surprised that the video didn’t touch on carbon sequestration much; essentially, mass timber buildings are giant carbon storage vessels. As long as the wood is being used, the carbon it stores is withheld from release back into the atmosphere. This is incredibly effective in mitigating the emissions that construction causes. They also didn’t talk about how engineered mass timber really is, it’s kind of insane. Each piece is scanned at the plant and 2x’s are connected long ways by finger joints, glued together. The length of each piece of lumber is analyzed to create the strongest glulam beam or clt slab possible, and tests are routinely ran to ensure strength. Moisture is also heavily considered, and lumber with similar MC (moisture content) is paired together to account for compression and expansion. I’ll stop my rambling now, but mass timber is really a fantastic building material that I’m excited to see further integrated into our built environment.

[lazurusknight]

There are no other building materials that are as carbon negative as timber. The fact that we lack an industry willing to harvest in a sustainable manner is a separate issue that must be solved, but what problem does CLT end? Concrete. It ends dependence on all-concrete and steel structures, which are incredibly carbon intensive. There are simply no better alternatives for being carbon-negative, and the idea that we need to iron out the timber industries' notably lax adherence to regulation, as well as tightening and revising current regulations, shouldn't be a show-stopper, but an obvious first step.

[ColoradoSatellite]

Trees are the most renewable resource on the planet. Traps carbon and they grow back.

[Dean-pcok]

Hope its not like the wood i bought from home depot. Straight today, curly fry tomorrow.

[geoffoakland]

There is an 18 story almost 300 foot all wood building in Norway that was finished 2019. It was the tallest all wood building until the Ascent building in Milwaukee was completed in 2022.

[butchcassidy]

I'm a logger. Trees are farmed these days and managed very well. We should use more of the tree. We leave all kinds of materials in the woods as a by product. We could easily grind the scraps and make pellets to use in the coal fired electrical plants. We need more forward thinking people running our country and less of the rich cronies who only care about themselves and their friends. Lining pockets at the expense of natural resources and the American public.

[Ubergamer]

Calling those areas clear cuts is such dishonest propaganda, not to mention the selective avoidance of discussing carbon sequestration. Having spent a good portion of my life in them, the PNW forests are incredibly well maintained and have been managed effectively for decades now. It’s much harder to do the Nordic type selective cutting in the PNW due to the tree sizes and slopes.

[NegativeSpacesPositiveEntropy]

I’m an architectural student and I had a hard time believing that would was better for the environment, but after trying my best to disprove it I wound up accidentally proving that they were right. I think so much of it is that we have to look at it not just from seedling to finish product but the entire cycle of when we demolition these buildings, concrete and steel buildings are relatively useless after their demolition the concrete can’t be reused it just becomes more that has to be dealt with and steel is difficult to reclaim. Meanwhile is a recyclable product. We can use it as biomass we can turn it into paper we can do all number of things with the cellulose after it serves its purpose as a structure. Also the fact that we cut down the forest but we replant it, we keep the carbon cycle going of using trapped carbon from the atmosphere which is what wood is it is a byproduct of the tree stripping CO2 from the air and then we’re going to lock that away in a structure and replant the forest to continue the cycle.

I can’t put enough emphasis on how much I did not want to believe that this was the right thing to do but when you compare it to mining iron ore all the processing the smelting the transportation and then we’re not gonna get into the concrete and how much energy it takes to create and transport concrete. Unbelievably the greatest thing to do is to use trees and replant. And on a very personal note, I would rather make structures using the beauty of wood than the cold despotic aesthetic of concrete. And if I am going to use concrete, I would rather use it as a reinforcement for reinforced rammed earth which beautifully complements wood.

I’m going to add one concern i have and that’s bio diversity of the species of wood we are cutting. I am very concerned about becoming a mono culture where we find a tree that produces the most amount of straight timber and we only plant that it would make a forest extremely susceptible to fungus and insects and all mater if parasites. I think it’s very important that if this is the future that we make sure it’s a genetically sustainable future.

[cdc]

Wood: lighter than concrete or steel, stronger than steel when dried properly, cheaper to produce than either if farmed correctly and more resistant to collapse than steel in a fire for a longer time period, oddly enough. Once steel hits around 500 F it begins to lose all strength and bends, causing structural integrity to fail. Wood chars on the outside, but takes longer to burn to the point of failure, the charring actually acting as an insulator until it burns off. Besides, wood doesn't melt...

[elijahrodgers]

I live in the heart of forest plantations. The trees that are here were planted by the loggers and forest managers themselves. It is farming. They clear cut to plant another crop of trees. Yes it doesn’t look good right after it is harvested but in a few years it is a beautiful new forest. It is amazing how fast these pine trees grow. This is not “green washing” or deforestation. What takes our forests and country life away is city growth.

[EngrCo]

The Airport in Cebu Philippines is a beautiful example of a large timber building. It looks amazing.

[NahumOchoa]

I watched the building in Seattle being built. It was honestly amazing how quickly that building went up. It took about a week for the floors to be installed. I’ve never seen a multi story building go up so quickly.

[bryanpetersen]

Anyone who spends time in the woods knows that we need to cut more timber today. Having cut areas in the forest makes a wildlife magnet, full of life.

[tinay]

as long as old growth trees remain protected, +areas really replanted, more will support this.

[TheMonkdad]

I’m a long time woodworker but when they talked about fire safety I immediately remembered Notre Dame Cathedral in 2019.