Companies are recovering and recycling more used pallets and timber packaging, and cutting purchases of new, according to a survey commissioned by the Timber Packaging and Pallets Confederation (TIMCON) and the Forestry Commission.
The report from Timbertrends found that the quantity of recycled and reused pallets in circulation increased from 55% to 62.2% between 2009 and 2010. At the same time, the amount of reused and recycled timber used in manufacture increased from 9% to 12.2%.
The Quantification of the Manufacture, Recycling and Re-use of Wood Packaging in the UK 2010 also says that the packaging and pallets sector is also using more British-grown timber.
TIMCON president John Dye told the organisation’s general meeting in Leicester that the increase in recovery and recycling was positive.
“It demonstrates again the important place timber has in a sustainable future,” he said. “Compare that with plastic, which is difficult to repair and originates from a finite fossil fuel resource.”
He said that the use of home-grown timber was also a move in the right direction, and underlined the importance of the pallet sector to the UK sawmilling industry.
“The packaging and pallet industries consume more than 1.5 million m³ of timber every year and, by using falling boards and smaller logs, form part of the highly efficient cascade system, where every part of a harvested tree is used.”
Mr Dye added that the information in the report would also be useful in TIMCON’s lobbying to get the government to change its biomass subsidy policy.
“This currently makes it more attractive to burn wood, and release the carbon it has absorbed, than use it in manufactured products first,” he said.
The Timbertrends report, he concluded, would become a “cornerstone in TIMCON’s efforts to communicate the scale and importance of this industry to the UK; for its environment, employment and for business ”.
