EGGER wood waste recycling

Egger Romania invested in resource saving technology and included recycling in the process. Up to 18% of the wood used in Romanian factories are recycling material. They process waste wood from furniture, pallets, wooden packaging materials, construction and demolition, that meets the requirements of the applicable directives and inspection systems. The material is also inspected visually and contaminated wood is separated for thermal use. In Romania, the EGGER Group runs its own recycling enterprises under the name Timberpak.

Suitable recycled wood is processed there and used for chipboard production. Large volumes of by-products and recyclable wood are generated by the plants. The company upgrades them into materials or uses them to generate environmentally friendly heat and electricity. With EGGER wood-based materials, the company established good environmental performance of the urban wood material. The objective of a closed loop material cycle is, on the one hand, to reuse all waste and by products as efficiently as possible, and on the other hand, to make substances used in the product available again for production at the end of the product life cycle, by implementing optimal recycling. The possibility of a closed material cycle should be taken into account even during the preliminary stage of product planning in conjunction with product design. Re-use of materials that were already used in products and have passed through a usage phase. The great challenge is to separate materials so that they become again source materials for new products. The collection division of recycled wood and the recycling installation of wood from Romania are the EGGER’s solution for a secondary, sustainable life cycle of materials based on wood.

The recycling wood quantities which were elaborated and recycled in 2016 by EGGER Romania replaced the potential of usage of 35,000 hectares of forests. The company has a unique wood recycling installation in Romania, dedicated and used exclusively for this purpose. At Romanian level, EGGER uses in average 17 % recycled wood for the production of panels based on wood in 2018. Last year, EGGER Romania reached a level of approximately 8 % and in the half of 2017, while in 2017 reach 15 % of recycled wood, and it was estimated a share of 17 % for the second half of 2017. The objective for 2020 is to recycle more than 150,000 tonnes of materials based on wood, annually, equivalent to more than 30 % of the volume of wood from forest works, according to Ioan Banciu, technical director of EGGER Eastern Europe division.