This paper exemplifies the possibilities to compare products and product systems with help of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool for environmental assessment. IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute has developed a concept for evaluation of environmental impacts based on normalisation, based on so called environmental quality objectives (EQO). This concept makes it possible to compare a product’s relative contribution to different impacts categories including, amongst others, climate change and acidification etc but also human and ecological toxicity. It is not possible to determine whether one building material as such is more favourable than another, from an environmental point of view, if not the functionally related to its applications is concerned. Instead, different parts of the building systems or the whole building are the ultimate context for assessment. The sustainability issue concerning treated timber should therefore be addressed as follows: In which applications are treated wood preferable to other materials from an environmental as well as economic perspective? The applications described above represent the strategically sustainable market segment. The next logical step will then be to identify them.

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