Sawdust Answer To The World's Plastic Problem

[Sofia + 35]

A technology startup near Ontario’s leafy border with Michigan says it has the answer to the world’s plastic pollution problem: sawdust.

Origin Materials is getting ready to pay sawmills in the area $20 a ton for the scraps left over in the process of turning logs into lumber, which it will use to make recyclable plastic bottles that remove carbon-dioxide from the sky because they’re made from sustainably sourced wood waste.

https://www.post-gazette.com/business/money/2019/07/23/Sawdust-might-be-one-answer-to-the-world-s-plastic-problem/stories/201907230016

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

There are existing machines off-the-shelf that will take sawdust and compress it hydraulically into "hockey pucks," clumps of hard material that can be fed into either an industrial boiler or used by homeowners as a wood log substitute.  Compressing ground woody matter is already the path to wood pellets, which is becoming an interesting product line for hardwoods in the USA.  Pellet stoves are all the rage, and some States actually pay subsidies for their purchase. 

I am surprised that there is a payment to the lumber yards for that sawdust.  Typically sawdust is a waste product that has to be disposed of, and you would get the material either free or they pay you to truck it away.  Making payments will distort the economics of puck production.  The idea that sawdust will displace PET and PVC in blow molding plants strikes me as far-out.  I just don't see the packaging industry going that way.  Cheers.

[NickW + 2,714]

2 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

There are existing machines off-the-shelf that will take sawdust and compress it hydraulically into "hockey pucks," clumps of hard material that can be fed into either an industrial boiler or used by homeowners as a wood log substitute.  Compressing ground woody matter is already the path to wood pellets, which is becoming an interesting product line for hardwoods in the USA.  Pellet stoves are all the rage, and some States actually pay subsidies for their purchase. 

I am surprised that there is a payment to the lumber yards for that sawdust.  Typically sawdust is a waste product that has to be disposed of, and you would get the material either free or they pay you to truck it away.  Making payments will distort the economics of puck production.  The idea that sawdust will displace PET and PVC in blow molding plants strikes me as far-out.  I just don't see the packaging industry going that way.  Cheers.

I thought a lot of it gets used to make particulate board and also a proportion in chipboard manufacture.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

Just now, NickW said:

I thought a lot of it gets used to make particulate board and also a proportion in chipboard manufacture.

I dunno, Nick, I am not in that business.  I did see the puck-making machines at a trade fair in Germany; there were both German and Taiwanese manufacturers. I was under the impression that they used shredded chips of wood to make particle board sheet, but hey, I am no expert.  When you go around up in Northern British Columbia where the sawmills are, you see these large burn piles with sawdust and waste wood being burned inside a retainer that has spark arrestors on them, it is just waste being dumped, no attempt to use any of the stuff.  Nobody actually pays anybody for the stuff, probably costs more to ship out than you could possibly recover.  (That was some years ago; possibly the economics have changed since, although I doubt it.  The pulp and paper industry used to absorb waste wood for conversion into pulp; that industry is in the doldrums.  No money anywhere.)