IT’S a startling fact that the UK produces a tree-mendous 4.5 million tonnes of waste wood every single year - 3.75 million tonnes of which is reprocessed. Clearly, keeping wood out of landfills is serious business.
What might surprise someone working in waste wood 20 years ago is how little is now sent to landfill and how much more is recovered from general waste streams.
Six years ago waste wood was a huge waste export for the UK but, as Brexit is proving (albeit in a hugely roundabout way), nothing in the world of economics stays still for long. Last year a mere 300,000 tonnes was exported - mainly to Europe and Scandinavia - as the ever- growing British biomass industry means more and more waste wood is being reserved for domestic use.
The Great British biomass boom Biomass is now the single biggest user of waste wood in the UK, with 2.1 million tonnes a year heading for plants to create a renewable source of energy.
“There are roughly 30 larger scale biomass plants in total planned for the UK and it is predicted that a further one million tonnes of biomass will be needed over the next 12 months to cope with more plants coming on stream,” said Julia Turner, executive director of the Wood Recycler’s Association (WRA).
So how exactly is waste wood classified? What sort of wood qualifies as Grade A, and what makes wood lower grade?
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“That would bring the total amount of waste wood biomass use in the UK to around 3.1 million tonnes per year.
“Once all the new plants are operational we will be supplying around 2.9 TW of annual domestic power production out of waste wood biomass. That’s enough to supply around 770,000 UK households a year, equivalent to 1% of the UK’s total energy requirement.”
However, the upsurge of biomass plants is a mixed blessing for some. Waste wood can be broken down into several categories, or ‘grades’ to use the industry term, with different grades being more appropriate for being reprocessed in different ways. As biomass has grown,
thanks in part to generous government subsidies, other reprocessing areas have seen their supplies of waste wood suffer.
“It’s all just about making sure the right grades are directed to the right usage,” explained Vicki Hughes, group business development director at Enva Wood Recycling. “If you look at the waste wood hierarchy, the first use for wood should always be to reuse it, which we obviously try to encourage.
"Following that, it's important to ensure that each grade is used by the correct end market. So Panelboard mills and IED Chapter IV Biomass plants are the right end markets for Grades B and C, but clean Grade A wood should then be used for animal bedding in the first instance, then panelboard feedstock because they are recycling options rather than recovery.
“The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) is a charity which spent many years developing a market and protocols around animal bedding, that resulted in the creation of a very successful recycled bedding sector. However, this material is now harder to find because it's been used in small scale biomass. The government have introduced a lot of subsidies for small and large scale biomass plants which has made it difficult for panelboard and animal bedding producers to compete.
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