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The utilization of wood in long life products, such as construction materials in the built environment, is aneffective way to optimize the use of natural resources while also reducing negative environmental impacts.However, the environmental benefits of timber, especially in the construction sector, are not always clearlyunderstood. As a renewable material, timber is available in perpetuity if it is obtained from sustainably managedforests. Using timber in the built environment stores sequestered atmospheric carbon dioxide in long-life productsand timber can be incinerated at the end of its life (or its multiple lives) with energy recovery, thereby minimizingdemolition waste. The built environment effectively acts as an extension of the forest. The question is: howshould the environmental benefits of timber use be measured and presented? To answer that question, thispaper offers an overview of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methods the forest products sector could broadlyapply to evaluate and report the sustainability performance of wood. In addition to environmental LCA, thepaper also incorporates an overview of organizational LCA (O-LCA), and social LCA (S-LCA). Furthermore, thispaper discusses environmental product declarations (EPDs) and construction standards aiming to enable bettercomparability of the environmental performance of products. This review paper concludes with a discussion ofwhere the opportunities for the forest products sector lie and the need for joint actions within the sector. Theimportance of including the storage of sequestered atmospheric carbon dioxide into the standards assessingthe environmental impact is emphasized.