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🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Every cubic meter of Garnica plywood locks away about 500 kg of CO2, and the mills behind it run on 100% renewable electricity. ESG officer Oscar Crespo Pinillos explains why the hardest remaining emissions sit in the glue, and why architects should be asking manufacturers for more proof, not less.
🎓Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion
Oscar Crespo Pinillos is the ESG Officer at Garnica, the Spanish plywood maker headquartered in La Rioja. Its panels are made from sustainably grown European poplar and sold in more than 40 countries.
He grew up in the same region, where his grandfather, a forest ranger, sold logs to Garnica when it was a small sawmill nearly a century ago.
Oscar studied in Spain and Finland and finished his forestry engineering degree in Maine. He went on to earn a master’s from the Yale School of Forestry on a full scholarship.
Before joining Garnica over eight years ago, he worked in biodiversity conservation, forestry consulting, and poplar plantation management.
🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building
In this episode, Oscar Crespo Pinillos makes the case for the oldest carbon-capture tech on the planet: the tree.
🧠Key Insight #1: Plywood that stores more carbon than it emits
The Challenge: Many building materials come with a heavy carbon bill and a lot of greenwashing. Some products gain market share by claiming to be “less unsustainable” than the alternatives.
The Solution: Garnica makes its plywood from European poplar grown by small forest owners. Its mills run on 100% renewable electricity and close to 100% renewable heat, with the heat coming from biomass left over from production.
ROI: Each cubic meter of plywood stores about 500 kg of CO2. As Oscar puts it, we’re good at engineering and AI, “but we cannot really beat trees at this.”
🧠Key Insight #2: Once the energy is clean, the carbon is in the glue
The Challenge: Garnica cut its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by about 80% against its 2019 baseline. What’s left is mostly Scope 3, and most of that comes from the fossil-based resins that bind the veneer layers.
The Solution: Bio-based binders. Garnica’s Natu1 product swaps fossil-derived chemicals for bio-based glues, aiming for an engineered panel that’s as close to 100% bio-based as possible. More R&D is underway.
ROI: Greener glue makes the whole panel greener. It goes after the emissions that renewable power alone can’t reach.
🧠Key Insight #3: The documentation exists. Nobody’s asking for it
The Challenge: Garnica has published EPDs for years, tracked Scope 1 and 2 for more than a decade, and added Scope 3 recently. But demand for the data fades as products move through the supply chain. Architects care, and the steps in between often don’t.
The Solution: Specifiers and buyers should ask for EPDs, sourcing details, and carbon data at every step. They should also insist on trustworthy origins in a global market where some competitors face deforestation or forced-labor risks.
ROI: Asking rewards the manufacturers doing the work and pushes the whole supply chain to move faster. It also gives your project data it can defend.
Sustainable Soundbite
🤗 Your Green Building Action Plan
Transform your next project with these steps:
This Week: Pick one wood product on a current spec, such as plywood, casework, or millwork. Ask the manufacturer for its EPD and sourcing documentation.
This Quarter: Add a request for EPDs and chain-of-custody documentation to your standard spec or procurement checklist. Make it a habit, not a one-off.
This Year: Go after the Scope 3 hotspots in your material choices, such as the binders, resins, and finishes. Then follow Oscar’s advice and become the go-to expert on one material or sector.
Connect & Learn More
🌿 Access full episode resources: Green Building Matters Podcast
💚Join the Green Building Movement
📄 Read the transcript: HERE
🔗 Connect with Oscar Crespo Pinillos:
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