Wood Products

Since the wood products industry is so broad, including everything from sawmill operations to secondary manufacturers, it's necessary to separate the various operations in order to understand the Pollution Prevention (P2) options there.

Sawmill operators, or primary wood producers, must deal with their primary waste stream - sawdust. Thanks to new technologies, there are a number of ways to turn that "waste stream" into a usable product, beyond the traditional burning for energy recovery, or utilization as animal bedding. Sawdust can be incorporated into a number of products. With saw flour, it is combined with plastics to form wood composite. This wood composite is then sold to consumers as a low maintenance decking option. In addition, there are companies experimenting with utilizing these composites as sashes for window construction. Other efforts include developing commercial grade compost from wood residue. Each one of these efforts is supported by consumers who search out products with recycled content. This has the effect of encouraging the industry to continue to develop, perfect and distribute more goods with recycled wood content.

As with the primary wood producers, secondary industries have made great strides in the past few years to evaluate their P2 options. Driven primarily by the desire of the individual companies to reduce their liability and waste disposal costs, P2 has become a familiar term among firms that paint, coat, print, clean, glue, build, sand or grind wood products. As with the auto industry, installation of high volume low pressure (HPLV) spray guns, used with low volatile organic compound (VOC) paints and coatings, are among the most popular and practical P2 change-overs. This industry is also seeing the benefits of UV cured and electrostatically applied powder coatings.

By informing retail outlets of their desire to select wood products that have been produced in an environmentally sound manner, consumers influence producers. Consumers should check out their local home-building store. Opportunities abound with choices ranging from engineered wood I-beams, to wood waste mixed with post-consumer plastics for waterproof structures. Another important consumer choice is in the selection of treated wood materials. Many companies are now offering treatment alternatives to toxic arsenic and chromium preservatives. Although these alternative treatment methods cost slightly more, the benefits are important to people coming into contract with the treated material, as well as to the environment at large.

For more information about P2 choices in the wood industry sector, contact:

Laurel Sukup
DNR Business Sector Specialist
(715) 365-8936.