Increased sustainability for wood construction by recycling

IRG/WP 10-50275

H Heräjärvi, I Pirhonen, T Räty, P Saukkola

Wood is the only renewable and certified industrially available construction material that has also unique opportunities as carbon storing, energy-independent and generally approved resource. However, if burning into energy is not counted, there are only few viable and competitive solutions for re-use or recycling of various wood products. The biggest challenge related to recycling of wood products is the incompatibility of different building elements and components with each other. Because of lacking harmonised building standards, lots of usable wood products are burned or even landfilled. The objective of this paper is to assess the current state of recycling, the available raw material resources, restrictions set by laws, directives and standards, as well as the possibilities to launch new business in the field of wood product re-use and recycling. The results showed that recycled wood product volumes could be increased relatively easily by either normative or voluntary means. In fact, it is obvious that both these means will be put into practice within the next decade, which evidently leads to an increased rate of recycling. This, in turn, will cause positive changes to the actual environmental performance as well as to the so-called green market competitiveness of wood products. Regarding wood-based waste management, most work is obviously needed with construction and demolition wastes. The idea of entrepreneurship, research and development based on sustainable solutions, which we call the business of green living, is expected to developed into real economic activity during the next decade. Wood, being the only true green construction material, provides us with an opportunity to develop this business as a real competitive advantage


Keywords: construction, green building, recycling, re-use, sustainability, wood-based wastes

Conference: 10-08-23/28


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