FEATURES- ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY
Reduce, reuse, recycle
– recycling timber
Recycling is big in many industries right now, simply because it helps companies save costs. But how easy is it to recycle and repurpose timber?
By Kelly-Ann Prinsloo
Recycling timber is an economically- and environmentally-viable process. Image: Pixabay
The word‘ recycle’ is inherently hopeful. It suggests that, long after the building has been torn down or the scrap has been thrown away, the used timber, steel, bricks and more can be infused with a new lease on life.
Timber recycling is the process of turning waste timber into usable products. In the US and Europe, it became popular in the early 1990s when issues of deforestation and climate change prompted both timber suppliers and consumers to turn to a more sustainable timber source. Recycling timber is the most environmentally-friendly form of timber production and is very common in countries such as Australia and New Zealand where supplies of old wooden structures are plentiful. Timber can also be repurposed as wood chips, which can be used to power homes or power plants.
In 2014 about 900 million trees were cut down. That equates to about 2.47 million trees cut down every day. And, while many of the trees cut for timber construction purposes are also planted for those purposes, deforestation is still a problem that the timber construction industry, and the world at large, must deal with.
54 FEB / MARCH 2017 //