Wood recycling drives the bio-based economy
Nearly 47 million tonnes of wood waste is generated in the EU every year, with only around 40 % of it currently being recycled in new products. There is huge, untapped potential in recycling wood products such as fibreboard, a wood-based panel widely used in furniture manufacturing, interior design and construction. This was the starting point of the EU-funded EcoReFibre project that identified the need for commercially proven, scaled-up methods to encourage industry uptake. “Reusing fibres in high-quality materials required new solutions across disciplines,” says project coordinator Stergios Adamopoulos from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences(opens in new window). “Our aim was to facilitate smarter material use with an industrially scalable recycling option at high volumes. Our focus throughout was on upscaling high-quality waste supply at volume, and on creating circular business models and markets.”
Sorting, defibration and fibre reutilisation
To achieve its objectives, the project carried out a series of pilots to demonstrate advances in wood waste sorting, defibration and fibre reutilisation. These included innovative technologies for recovering wood fibres from waste streams in sufficient quality for producing new fibreboards. Another demonstration reused wood fines to integrate them into the surface layers of particleboard, another type of wood-based panel. “The smallest particles in wood recycling, known as fines, are often considered a low-value by-product,” explains Adamopoulos. “One of our pilots showed how they can instead be integrated into new particleboard production.” The overall goal of these demonstrations was to reduce reliance on virgin fibres and pave the way towards the use of recycled fibres of up to 25 % in new fibreboards. Prototype solutions were tested and validated along several industrial-scale and economically viable pathways and recycled into new products such as wood-based panels, insulation and bio-composites.
Tapping market potential of wood waste
Another important result of the project has been the EcoReFibre Strategic Roadmap which aims to foster the circularity and market potential of wood waste by describing the current market context, highlighting challenges and opportunities and formulating research and policy recommendations. In terms of further research and development, the roadmap identifies three key areas of importance. The first is the need to create viable secondary raw material markets (i.e. the buying and selling of recyclable material). Second, improved data systems are needed to integrate material flow and provide market information. Finally, the project calls for further optimisation and development of technologies for wood waste sorting, fibre extraction and cleaning, as well as technologies for panel production using recycled fibres.
Technological innovation and strategic orientation
The bottom line is that the EcoReFibre project has demonstrated that recycling fibreboard and solid wood waste into high value-added products such as new fibreboard is technologically and economically viable at the industrial level. The challenge now is to scale up and create a viable circular economy around wood fibreboard waste. “The technical solutions of EcoReFibre and our Strategic Roadmap are aligned with the goals of the bioeconomy strategy(opens in new window) and the upcoming EU Circular Economy Act(opens in new window),” adds Adamopoulos. “These will help the wood panel industry to enhance its leading role in building a more resilient and competitive Europe.” More broadly, the project has shown how an industry can advance circularity through technological innovation, largely underpinned by cross-sector collaboration. “Keeping wood in material loops delivers the greatest overall added value,” notes Adamopoulos. “It preserves embedded carbon in new products, strengthens the EU’s circular bioeconomy and reduces pressure on virgin resources.”
