At Carolina Timberworks, we’ve long believed sustainability is the path to our future. If you’ve followed along with our recent milestones, this won’t come as a surprise.
When we broke ground on our new timber frame shop in West Jefferson, North Carolina in 2019, reducing waste, increasing flexibility, and gaining more control over our processes (minimizing on-site time) were a few of our main goals.
And when we installed a rooftop solar array on our shop in 2022, we were proud to achieve 95% net-zero carbon usage. It produces two times the electricity we use in the shop, which significantly reduces our carbon footprint.
For years, we’ve advocated for sustainable building practices like mass timber. In fact, timber framing is the original mass timber.
Did you know that together, construction and facility operations account for nearly half of U.S. fossil fuel emissions? There’s a vast amount of room for improvement, and building with mass timber can be part of the solution.
As a result, we’re thrilled, honored, and humbled to receive the 2024 Leadership Award for Sustainable Manufacturing from the North Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NCMEP). Not only does this award highlight the importance of sustainable building practices, but it also celebrates our commitment to preserving the environment for future generations.
Sustainability is at the core of everything we do. But we’ve only just gotten started.
In the coming months and years, we aim to achieve several more major goals. Next, we’ll transition away from diesel-powered equipment and replace it with electric-powered trucks for service and delivery to reduce our carbon footprint even further.
Above all, we embrace all these changes while maintaining the highest quality timber frame work. We’re enormously proud to pursue both sustainability and craftsmanship as we shape our vision of the future.