Upcycling waste timber

Timber waste is a great case for stupid solutions, and for clever solutions.  A stupid solution takes something that works elsewhere in the world, and applies it out of context.  A clever solution looks at the context, and applies bits of solutions from elsewhere.

In the case of timber, the common stupid solution is to build a furnace, reduce timber to its lowest state (heat energy by burning) and then claim to be recycling.  Which it is, in a stupid kind of way.  There are plenty of these sorts of proposals around the traps, and they all rely on massive capital investment and equally massive quantities of timber waste to pay it off.  What they don't rely upon is intelligence; timber in the form of energy needs no intelligence to produce or sell or manage.

The clever solution for timber looks at the unique circumstances, and so can only be told in a particular context.  I will refer to a facility that I had some part in establishing - the Hazelmere Timber Recycling Facility run by the Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council (EMRC).  This facility started by looking at feedstock - how much is there?  It then looked at markets for timber products, ranging across the sweep of high value, low volume markets (recycling timber back into structures, or art or something similar) to low value, high volume (energy).  What emerged in the Perth context is two markets.  Particle board manufacture for a high value wood chip, and bedding for broiler sheds for a lower value sawdust.

This worked for the two components because they had local markets.  Wood chip had a Laminex particle board plant within 200 km of Perth (Dardanup) backloading trucks hauling virgin chip to the Laminex MDF plant in Perth (since closed).  Laminex needed to diversify its wood chip supply from forest sourced product, and was a key partner.  Saw dust supply for bedding also grew out of problems confronted by local broiler growers near Hazelmere in sourcing saw dust from sawmills in the south west of WA.

With the markets there, and reasonable fees able to be set for waste suppliers, it was then a matter of gently growing the business from a small nucleus to what is now a large undertaking.  All the while, large investment was deferred until confidence could be built around the viability of the investment.  This meant enough feedstock at the right price producing the right product for the market.  Each needed, and will continue to need, tweaking.

The current operations work here.  Pricing is such that an array of waste collection business have sprung up to source waste timber for the plant, the product able to marketed is well enough understood that a large investment (>$1m) in fixed plant can be sustained, and the EMRC justly earns kudos for the project.

This particular solution will not work elsewhere.  Upcycling requires intelligence, it requires understanding and it requires the courage to let opportunities unfold.  None of those attributes follow from copying the final outcome.