Furniture makers are among the biggest users of wood and wood based panels in the country and, consequently, the biggest ‘wasters’. The Furniture Industry Research Association’s (FIRA) investigation into the subject estimates that the industry generates £62m of solid timber and £58m of sheet materials waste annually.
FIRA‘s research was commissioned by the Furniture Industry Environment Trust (FIET) and backed by a grant from the Biffa Waste Services Biffaward scheme. The aim was to evaluate waste or co-product generation and look at ways of minimising it, recycling, or putting it to other uses to avoid the cost of landfill.
Alternatives to landfill
The research concludes that, while minimisation should be a priority, some degree of co-product generation is inevitable and it urges all companies to evaluate the alternatives to landfill. In-house reuse, says FIRA, should be considered first, weighing benefits against reprocessing time and labour. But there is a growing off-site reuse market, with timber reclamation businesses collecting off-cuts, generally for a small fee.
Recycling options worth exploring, says the study, include lamination and finger-jointing off-cuts. Selling by-product timber and board to board makers is also feasible, although smaller board makers are more likely to take the material from a central ‘collator’ than direct.
By-product composting is another growing possibility, with FIRA helping develop technologies to accelerate the process.
There are also increasing opportunities for fuel manufacture. The UK’s first wood-pellet plant is being built in Wales and demand for charcoal is booming (current UK consumption is 50,000 tonnes), with portable kilns available for on-site production.
Combustion
The other main option, says FIRA, is combustion. “The economics of combustion improved rapidly in the 1990s, with payback periods now between two and four years for companies sending waste to landfill and using oil-based heating,” says the report.
It adds that the latest combined heat and power systems can switch easily between generating heat in the winter to electricity in the summer.
And more co-product solutions lie ahead, says FIRA, including the use of woodwaste for insulation, as an animal feed component and, combined with plastic resin, as a composite board.
What is needed now, concluded the organisation, is a central source of information and reference for furniture makers to deal with their co-products. The fragmented nature of the industry and its underdeveloped internet use make a central electronic brokerage, like that in the US, impractical. But, as a start, FIET is compiling a list of business involved in waste collection, use, combustion and recycling.
