Environment minister Joan Ruddock has called on the UK to make more use of ‘waste’ wood. She joins many in the timber industry already tuning into the environmental and commercial benefits of identifying waste from manufacturing and construction.
But Defra calculates that 10 million tonnes of wood still goes to landfill each year. Aside from the environmental problems this creates, this is a massive missed opportunity.
The first opportunity is to consider how lean your business process is. We’ve all heard of lean manufacturing, and the low carbon economy is becoming an environmental driver refocusing our attention on how to eliminate waste from our businesses. I talk to timber manufacturers who have been able virtually to eliminate waste by reviewing manufacturing practices. This involves talking to suppliers about material requirements, examining yields and selling waste as a co-product.
This is something from which any com-pany can benefit – and a lean process is likely to be a green process.
Second, for those companies who’re already lean, there’s the biomass energy market. This is an increasingly popular method for low carbon energy generation, which has a growing hunger for wood.
The wood that might end up in landfill could be redirected to create more than 2,600GWh of electricity, saving 1.15 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions each year.
Many companies already use biomass for heat or power in their plants. There are many low or zero- waste wood product manufacturers and others will be developing a plan to reduce waste. They have discovered that this can lower fuel bills, avoid burning fossil fuels unnecessarily and help to reduce the environmental impact of their products.
If running a boiler isn’t viable, then companies may consider working together to identify ways to access and supply the emerging market of biomass boiler operators. This turns our combined waste into a co-product and unlocks another new income stream.
A few years ago, a colleague pointed to an off-cut timber pile outside a trade factory. “There’s gold in them there skips,” he joked.
How right he was.
