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 Gunes Hellweger May 3, 2014 07:00  |
Dear Team IK,
The idea of using recycled wood in the form of CLT panels is definitely a very sustainable solution.
My recommendations are:
1- You can provide some figures for the cost of this proposal. Per se, the availability of recycled wood.
Basically, you can quantify the supply in the market for this type of material and estimate what percentage
can be recycled as well as the cost of the recycling and CLT manufacturing process.
2- There can be incentives given to people who are willing to recycle the waste (wood studs)from construction
and also to the people who are willing to buy the recycled construction material. In fact, LEED does acknowledge
this effort within their credit rating. You may mention about that.
Overall, this opportunity sounds promising, you may take it to the next step with a few improvements!
Best wishes,
Gunesh
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 Doron Bracha May 5, 2014 12:28 |
It's a good proposal and I agree with Gunesh.
Reclaimed wood has indeed been used successfully in many projects, and it has many advantages.
Reusing wood and extending its service life is good practice. In addition to the obvious reasons, I'd like to mention that wood doesn't store CO2 forever, it releases it as it dies and decays.
That's yet another reason to reuse it instead of dumping it in landfills.
But like many other things in reality, it has to be economically viable. Money is also a resource that should be conserved. Contractors would gladly reclaim and reuse wood if it pays. Otherwise it has to be mandated and/or subsidized.
I've seen projects in which demolition waste was sorted and over 90% was sent to recycling plants, so it is doable and should be promoted.
Cheers !..
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 Derrek Clarke Jun 9, 2014 06:05  |
I really like this proposal and think that with a little bit more detail it could go to the next level. I would particularly like to see more development in the potential benefits of recycling used construction wood into CLTs. Some suggestions have been mentioned above in the previous comments, but to expand on those:
- are there any social benefits attributable to CLTs?
- are there any of potential product uses beyond structural framing? Keeping in mind that in more urban areas, oftentimes there are tougher restrictions on the materials you can use for structural supports. You don't want to promote a building system with great sustainability attributes only to have it required to be coated in very unsustainable chemicals to meet building codes.
- it may also be helpful to estimate the potential amount of recyclable wood available. this could be achieved through estimating the amount of wood construction currently available and discounting back through previous years growth rates. This doesn't have to be absolute, but should paint a picture of the potential resource availability to show the size of any applicable scaling.
Good Luck!
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 Dan Whittet Jun 17, 2014 04:22  |
I have seen a lot of debate about waste wood being used a pelleted fuel source. The industry cannot get together on how to calculate emissions from this process. I would like to know more about what chemistry and embodied process energy would be required to build a manufactured timber from recycled lumber.
One thing I see a lot is timber waste is not selectively recycled. Some material is generally more useful than others. How about an incentive for recycling or reusing biobased material over a certain size?
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