October 6 is the start of a steering committee that will be helping Metro Vancouver work through the logistics, feasibility and steps regarding a the mandetory recycling of construction, demolition and renovation projects.
Currently wood is allowed to be dumped at landfills in the Lower Mainland. I actually find it amazing that this material group has not been banned from landfills long ago.
Wood waste is really pretty simple to identify and keep seperate … it really could be banned from the landfills without alot of confusion from the consumer. Clean wood is primarily recycled as follows: chipped or ground up and used as landfill cover; or it is ground up and used as fuel (wood would be used to replace burning coal). Some companies receive clean wood waste and re make pallets (etc), but this does not represent a large part of the recycling efforts with wood waste.
Metro Vancouver feels that there is at least 300,000 Mt’s of wood waste still in our waste stream. That is an amazing amount of material that could easily be kept out. Stay tuned I will keep the updates coming here.
Update October 6, 2009
I believe that wood waste will be banned from landfill in the next 18 to 24 months, there are some issues to work through for the various muncipalities … but I see the writing on the wall it is on its way. And so it should be, wood waste theoretically is an easy commodity to identify and keep seperate in both a commercial or residential setting.
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