How to start a timber recycling timber business

Yesterday's blog described the extent of the markets available for timber recycling. Perhaps that has whetted you appetite and you want to start something. It is not difficult.

First the plant. You can start on two paths. One is a big capital investment. The second is low capital cost, but higher operating costs. The second is lower risk path until the demand is proven, at which point you can make the big capital investment.

The capital investment path first. You'll need a large hardstand area on which to store waste timber, and potentially also chip and sawdust. It is important to keep the timber as free as possible from grit, particularly if you want to sell it for particle board manufacture. This hardstand would ideally be made of concrete to avoid being dug up. A load out ramp will also be required.

The plant you need then is a loader (large bucket to bulk out chip and sawdust), a small excavator with a grab to crush timber, and a single pass timber grinder from somebody like HAAS. All told, that will cost $1.5-2m.

The low cost path also needs a loader and an excavator, but the rest is more mundane. A low speed grinder with a magnet on the outfeed conveyor will do the initial size reduction, removing the main steel.

Hammel grinder for processing waste timber, photo from Town of Port Hedland

The "clean" product is then able to be ground using a high speed shredder, also with a magnet, and the finished product is cleaned up using a trommel. Again, with a magnet.

All of the plant used in the low cost path can be dry-hired, and so whilst more expensive to run, this is a good path to develop a market without the enormous upfront investment. More importantly, you can be strategic on what you purchase and what you hire so that you only purchase what can be transferred to an operation involving the single pass grinder.

Irrespective of which path you take, challenges are removing plastics, and perhaps unusually, stainless steel.

Stainless steel is not removed well using magnets, however it is increasingly used for pallet used in shipping. I don't have ready answers for the removal of stainless, but would love to hear suggestions. The best fix is to make sure your market can handle some stainless steel nails.

And so that's it. Simple. Kind of.

The lessons from scrap steel recycling

In yesterday's blog Scrap steel - the greatest recycling story ever?, I pointed out how significant scrap steel is as a recycling sector. The sheer size of scrap steel recycling through the Electric Arc Furnace obviously diverts large quantities of material from landfill, but it also saves immense quantities of energy and thus greenhouse gases.

Electric Arc Furnace, image courtesy of Made in China

 This is all good, but more interesting is what lessons can be learned. My view on why scrap steel is so heavily recycled is:

Steel is integral to industrial societies

Steel is used in so many applications, from consumer uses like cars, through to heavy duty industrial application such as reinforcing for concrete. Indeed, it is so pervasive that it could be said to define the current era. All of this means that there are a great many buyers each looking to use it in any number of applications. The market drives this.

Translating to other materials, it is vital to let markets drive recycling, a point I return to over and over. Recycling without a market is just another form of waste disposal. Markets thrive where there is competition, and so developing a myriad of uses for the materials within waste will encourage its recycling.

Steel from scrap is high quality and uses less energy to make than from iron ore

It always helps if product generated from recycled material is of high quality. It especially helps if there are energy savings (though these tend to net out through pricing of scrap steel when compared with other raw materials such as iron ore). 

Sometimes these attributes are inherent in the product. Steel, aluminium and glass all recycle into high quality products using less energy. Sometimes it is a decision made by the recycler. In deciding how to sort for materials, the quality of the end product is determined. Failing to remove steel (ie nails) from timber recycling plants means that the chip cannot be used for particle board manufacture.

Steel is a cornerstone of the American economy

The point here is similar but different to my first. Being linked into the dynamic, innovative American economy means that there will always be a seething mass of engineers and entrepreneurs looking to do better. This is one of the great features of the American culture, and why America recycles more than 80% of its steel, far better than any other economy.

Other materials have a great prospect if they too can hitch their wagon to a culture of innovation. You can imagine, for instance, palladium's use in electronics driving all sorts of recovery innovation. This will be the subject of a future blog.

Steel is easily extracted

Being magnetic, it is easy to remove steel. Similar processes can and are being invented for other products, but here is where materials processing engineers with some lateral thinking could be game changers. We need to support this, encourage it, drive it.

Steel is dense and easily transported

There is a lot of cost in moving space around. If you can get a lot of weight into that space, then you are increasing the transport efficiency. Less dense materials can be made more dense through compactors, and this must be (and is) a first step for any recycling operations.

Waste paper baler, photo courtesy of Alibaba

Steel is high value

Leaving perhaps the most important to last - steel has a value that is high and preserved as it moves through the economy. This enables a vast web of collectors consolidating to larger and larger entities, all profitable in their own right. The ecosystem thus created is vital. Container deposit schemes seek to create the same system of cascading value through legislation. Not as good as a natural market, but sometimes these sorts of steps are needed. Any long term recycling and upcycling venture must be financially worthwhile for all participants.

So my thoughts. I'd be keen for comments on how the success of scrap steel can be, and is being, translated to other materials.