WOOD RECYCLING UK

A Brighton-based wood recycling project, which recycles old timber from construction sites with the help of unemployed volunteers, has proved so succesful that it has become a national organisation.

The National Community Wood Recycling Project makes £100,000 a year recycling Brighton's estimated 30,000 tonnes of reusable waste wood and hopes to expand to 50 sites around the UK by 2007.

Here is their brief overview of Wood Recycling in the UK:

Although no definitive figures are available, estimates put the amount of wood in the waste stream at up to 10.6 million tonnes per annum.This is made up of wood from the construction, demolition, joinery and wood products manufacturing industries, wood packaging waste and pallets, green wastes and a substantial amount from the domestic waste stream.

The challenge is that wood recycling is generally concentrated around the few particleboard factories and is high volume and highly capital intensive. As there are only a relatively small number of high-volume wood re-processors, if it is to be recycled, waste wood has to be hauled long distances - in itself not a very good environmental option. In some parts of the country this is simply not economically viable so it ends up as landfill.

Unfortunately, at present, only a small proportion of all timber waste is recycled. Most is remanufactured into chipboard and MDF, although there is a growing demand for wood chip from some coal-fired power stations that are trying to reduce emissions of CO2 and other gasses by burning biomass to generate electricity.

There is also a growing mulch and animal bedding market that absorbs further tonnages and some wood is reclaimed by the demolition industry, sold to architectural salvage yards and is used to make traditional pine furniture, hand-built kitchens and for home renovations.And of course, more and more timber is being rescued by the increasing number of community - based wood recycling projects.

Recently the Government set up WRAP (Waste Resources Action Programme) to help create new and stable markets for waste wood, so eventually more of this versatile material will be seen not as waste but as a resource.

More details about this and affiliated projects around the country at: http://www.communitywoodrecycling.org.uk/index.htm