The paper, presented at the seminar ”Forestry in Europe: Implications of European Integration for National Forestry”, discusses the meaning of the European Community for the forestry sector, putting a special emphasis on recycling. Subsidies and the so-called ”Forestry Action Program” are among the topics that have raised controversial discussions within the EC. In addition, wood fibre recycling and the EC draft directive on packaging waste includes ambiguous targets for recycling.
The purpose of this investigation was to construct a procedure for measuring the profitability of the use of waste wood. The average price a sawmill gets from the waste wood depends, on the amount of use compared with the waste wood output, and on the composition of waste wood. Production of different kinds of waste wood presupposes investments, therefore, the size of a sawmill, in addition to its location, affects the composition. The data was collected by mailing a questionnaire through the central organizations of the sawmill industry in 1959.
The amount of waste wood per standard of sawn wood increases with the size of the sawmill. Because small sawmills cannot generally use or sell their waste wood, they strive at using the raw material effectively. In addition, they produce much rough-edged sawn wood, and sorting is not as strict as at large sawmills. They also leave their sawn wood untrimmed.
Finland’s pulp industry has expanded significantly since 1958. This has increased the need of raw wood, and the demand of sawmill waste. An additional data collected showed that in 1958 there was about 150 and in 1963 about 200 sawmills delivering waste wood to the forest industry. The amount of waste wood used as raw material compared with the total waste wood utilization had increased about 10% during the period. The production of cellulose chips became profitable when the annual output of sawn wood of a sawmill exceeded 1,000-2,000 stds. The size structure of the sawmills affects the regional usage of the waste wood.
The PDF includes a summary in English.
Residue of the wood is good raw material for pulp and board industries, but the question of the use of barking waste still remains to a great extent unsolved. This research deals with the possibilities to utilize the barking waste of sawmill industry in general and, in particular, its use as a soil improver and substrate for plants. It also explains the industrial manufacturing method of composted bark, bark humus, developed by the author as well as the properties of bark humus and the economy of bark humus and the economy of manufacturing.
The PDF includes a summary in Finnish.
The aim of this study was to determine the effect of leaching of heavy metals (Cr, As, Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn, Co, Mo) and earth-alkaline metal, barium (Ba), on the percolation and ditch water quality from the forest roads that contained ash in the road structures. Water quality was studied in the immediate vicinity below the ash layers as well as deeper in the road structure. Water quality was also determined in the drainage water in ditches that crossed the forest roads. A mixture of wood and peat based fly ash was used in the road structures. The treatments were: 1) no ash, 2) a 15 cm layer of ash/gravel mixture, 3) a 20 cm layer of ash/gravel mixture, 4) a 25 cm layer of ash, and 5) a 50 cm layer of ash. Large variation in the concentrations of Cr, As, Cu, Ni, Pb, Mo and Ba in the percolation water, even within the same treatment, caused difficulties to generalize the results. The concentrations of Cr, As, Ni, Pb, Mo and Ba in water samples were high in some treatment plot lysimeters containing ash compared to the control (no ash). On the other hand, many lysimeters had low and similar concentrations in water samples in the treatment plots containing ash compared to concentrations in the control plots. The ash in the roads did not affect the concentrations in the ditches. The leaching is uneven and seems to take place only from some parts of the ash layer. Risk for leaching is minimal if such parts are not widely spread.
At present, there are no means for reliably comparing the wood fiber contents of different material streams within the paper industry material chain with each other. The aim of this article is to introduce conversion factors that make it possible to quantify the volume of wood expressed in roundwood equivalent (RWE) values for different paper industry-related materials in the material chain. These conversion factors apply to wood pulp, paper, and recovered paper. European data are used in quantifying the paper industry material streams and calculating the RWE conversion factors. The introduced conversion factors can be used to estimate RWE volumes at a global scale. With assumption that paper recycling did not occur and that paper production volume remained unchanged, an additional volume of 666 million m3 RWEs would be required globally per annum to produce 167 million tons of virgin wood pulp to replace 222 million tons of recovered paper utilized by the paper industry in 2010. This volume is approximately the same as 1.6 times the total removal of wood in Europe (EU27), or the total annual removal of wood in the USA, Canada, and Brazil combined.