Building Sustainability: The board that never felled a tree

In a factory in the UAE, pruned palm fronds that would once have been burned or buried are being transformed into something the construction industry has never seen before: a structural building material made entirely without cutting down a single tree.

Every year, millions of fronds are pruned across the UAE to keep the country's 40 million palm trees healthy. Traditionally, the cuttings were burned in the open or buried in landfills, releasing CO₂ in one case and methane in the other.

Today, that same agricultural waste is chipped, washed, pressed, and turned into Palm Strand Board (PSB), a fire-rated, termite-resistant structural board and the flagship product of DesertBoard, a UAE manufacturer that has quietly built one of the region's most compelling case studies in circular-economy construction.

"If you ask me what's the biggest differentiator of PSB, I will say this is the only board in the world that's made without cutting down a tree," says Abdul Khader Traboulsi, Area Manager at DesertBoard. "The whole world is trying to fight deforestation, and we have offered a solution giving you a structural, high-performance, durable board that we are producing without cutting a tree."

Scale and sequestration

The process involves chipping, shredding, screening, washing, flaking, and drying the fronds, then blending them with a zero-formaldehyde adhesive before compressing the mixture into structural boards rated for up to 120 minutes of fire resistance. Production capacity is equivalent to 5,200 containers a year, Traboulsi says, "enough to fit out more than 200 Burj Khalifa towers."

The climate impact is measurable. Each cubic metre of PSB stores up to 401kg of carbon, per the company's Environmental Product Declaration. On Select Group's Peninsula project in Business Bay alone, DesertBoard calculates roughly 34 million kilograms of CO₂ equivalent sequestered through PSB use. "This is what we refer to as decarbonising the built environment," Traboulsi says.

Policy on paper, enforcement in practice

DesertBoard aligns itself with the UAE's Net Zero 2050 strategy, the 2030 Green Diversification Programme, the National Waste-to-Resources Programme, and green codes including Dubai's Green Building Code Al Sa'fat and Abu Dhabi's Estidama Pearl Rating System. PSB®'s zero-formaldehyde, E0/Super E0-rated adhesive, also improves indoor air quality by removing a Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) linked to cancer risk.

Yet Traboulsi is candid about the gap between policy and practice. "The legislation is already spelt out in those green building codes, and the issue is enforcement," he says. "At the moment, those green building codes remain optional. Once they start being enforced as the default building codes, then you start seeing more sustainable buildings being built - reduced carbon footprints and reduced emissions of formaldehyde."

If you go back 10 to 15 years, sustainability was the buzzword. Everyone was talking about it, driven by growing concerns about the environment. Look at it now: sustainability is an action people are taking," he says. "In the coming years, [JF1] it will be absolutely mandatory.

The government is already putting rules and regulations in place, and there will be more adoption, enforcement, and momentum around sustainability.  The UAE has consistently led the way in the Arab world, demonstrating an early willingness to invest in innovation and long-term transformation."

Building world-class standards

PSB has already been specified across a string of major UAE developments. "We are currently working on the following projects," Traboulsi says, listing Dubai Creek Harbour phases 3, 4 and 5 by Emaar Properties, the Peninsula development at Business Bay by Select Group, and the Yas Acres development by Aldar Properties in Abu Dhabi. The company has also completed the Kempinski Residences by Swiss Property Development in Dubai and is currently working on Damac Lagoons by Damac Properties and Shams Townhouses, part of the Town Square development by Nshama in Dubai.

DesertBoard's real-world testing goes beyond showrooms. The company has built a small complex of houses entirely out of PSB; two of them next to the factory, and a third, recently refurbished, in Creek Harbour. It also built a showroom in Expo City, though that structure is expected to be demolished to make way for new development on the site.

The material has also been put to humanitarian use. In July 2023, DesertBoard designed and fabricated 25 portable houses out of PSB for the Red Crescent, which donated the units to Jordan as temporary housing.

Securing the supply chain

Roughly 85% of the UAE's wood-based material demand is met through imports, with plywood imports alone valued at around $217 million in 2023. "We're not dependent on any imports," Traboulsi says. "While most of the wooden board demand was dependent on imports, we offer a local solution, thus securing the supply chain."

Distribution now spans Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman, with emerging partnerships in Egypt, Libya, India, the UK, Germany, and Tanzania.

The default standard

Looking 5-10 years ahead in the industry, Traboulsi sees the industry's centre of gravity shifting toward Large Timber Structures (LTS) and engineered bio-based building systems. This will be a convergence of sustainability, structural efficiency, and carbon performance at scale. "DesertBoard is evolving in that direction," he says, "advancing toward larger structural and engineered construction systems, building on the proven performance of PSB as a carbon-storing, high-strength material that replaces conventional carbon-intensive building products."

"The vision is to contribute to a built environment where sustainability is not an alternative option, but the default standard," Traboulsi says. For now, the company rests its case on one uncomplicated claim: PSB is "the only board in the world made without cutting a tree" and, at this scale, "it is the first in the world".

 *JF1- Couple of years. I do not want to place a specific expected timeline.