Over the course of a year in the UK at least 285,000 tonnes of waste medium density fibre board (MDF) arising as industrial process waste is generated from MDF producers and industrial users such as furniture manufacturers. The current disposal practices for this large amount of waste include either disposal to landfill or incineration, with MDF waste being used as a fuel for heat generation. The disposal of this waste has a significant environmental impact. Recycling of MDF to recover the original wood fibres for closed-loop recycling presents an elegant solution to reduce these impacts. This can be achieved through the use of a new technology which utilises a microwave based process to reclaim the wood fibres for re-use in MDF manufacture.

This presentation will discuss the environmental impacts of the reclamation of wood fibre from waste MDF relative to the impacts of the current disposal practices. Additionally, the impacts of using this recycled wood fibre in recycled MDF (rMDF) production will be examined relative to the impacts of current MDF manufacturing process to assess the potential benefits of closed loop recycling.

Through this investigation it was found that over the majority of the impact categories measured, recycling of the MDF waste through the microwave process shows a lower environmental impact when account is taken of the avoided burdens within MDF production in comparison with all other disposal routes. The use of recycled wood fibre from MDF waste in rMDF production resulted in reduced environmental impacts in terms of carbon emission and global warming potential, along with reductions in many other impact categories. These findings indicate that there is likely to be environmental advantage to diverting MDF waste to fibre recovery, however there must be a balance between the diversion of MDF waste to recycling and its use in energy production to support the MDF production processes or to feed energy from waste production in general. These aspects will also be discussed.