It is now recognised that while some carbon is released when a tree is harvested, carbon remains stored in the timber used in buildings and wood products.
For example a timber house frame for an average dwelling stores around 10 tonnes of CO2. On average, carbon accounts for nearly 50% of the dry weight of a wood product.
Recent research shows that more than 95 per cent of the carbon in wood remains stored even after up to 30 years in a landfill.
Timber products produced from Queensland forests stored almost 1 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere in 2007.