Becoming circular with recover

Unilin Panels has been recovering wood for its chipboards for many years. In fact, it takes in more than 2,000 tonnes of waste wood to turn into new panels every single day. This means every chipboard panel it produces is made from 95% recycled wood. Now, with Recover, Unilin is making its customers key in its mission to produce the world’s most circular wood-based panels.

Recover is Unilin’s way of taking back the leftover wood from furniture production and old wood in interior projects and turning these materials into high-quality chipboard panels, ready to be used again and again. Recover is bringing Unilin Panels closer to true product circularity.

“Waste wood isn’t wasted wood,” said Kristof Van Hoye, group project manager circular economy for Unilin. “Over the years, we’ve become experts in taking all types of unwanted wood and turning this raw material into high-quality chipboard panels. Recover makes it easy for our customers to become active in the circular economy and turn their unused and unwanted wood into new chipboard panels.”

HOW DOES RECOVER WORK?

Recover uses Unilin’s experience in the sorting and recycling of wood and its strong relationships with recovery partners to create a system that’s easy to implement for customers. Production waste (or unwanted wood from refurbishment projects) is put in containers, collected by recovery partners, sorted, cleaned and then chipped into new raw material for chipboard panels. It really is as simple as that and is why Unilin has 150 customers across Belgium, France and the Netherlands already reducing their waste and production costs with Recover.

Whenever Unilin is partnering on a more circular future with a customer, the Recover journey starts with an audit of unwanted wood. This helps Unilin to understand just what needs to be processed and how it can make it easy to ensure as much as possible ends up being turned into new chipboard panels.

“Recover puts waste wood into three categories, so customers can efficiently implement the system within their existing production with very minimal changes and training,” said Mr Van Hoye. “This is only possible because of our recovery partners and our own advanced recycling capabilities.

Depending on what wood products are used, how much waste is generated and the capacity of our customer; we develop an individual Recover system that fits in with existing waste streams and which ensures as much unwanted wood as can be is recycled into new panels.

“No matter what Recover system is implemented in a business or project, it is an efficient way to deal with waste and contribute to a more circular economy by recycling,” he continued. “Not only does Recover help us to improve the amount of post-consumer or pre-consumer wood used to make our panels; it also gives customers the chance to reduce their waste and the costs that come with it.

“We understand it’s important to remain competitive and that recycling can often be seen as something that’s hard to implement and more expensive than what’s already in place. But with Recover this really isn’t the case. As the environmental and financial costs of waste continue to rise, Recover offsets some of the footprint of production and will deliver long-term cost benefits, which will only become more apparent in the future.”

Currently, Recover is active in Belgium, France and the Netherlands; where 30 hubs control the flow of material from customers to Unilin’s production sites.

Operating this way allows the company to minimise the number of kilometres given up to transporting unwanted wood and helps Recover maintain efficiency.

Wood is collected by the customers’ closest hub, sorted or cleaned if needed, and then sent in bulk to cut down on emissions. In fact, some of the material arrives by waterway – by far the best way to bulk transport. This model also means Recover is scalable to all but the smallest of businesses.

OPEN TO ALL

“We’re committed to being a sustainable company and making the radical changes needed to have a positive contribution in the circular economy to protect future generations,” said Mr Van Hoye. “At Unilin Panels, we’ve been making our business circular for decades and Recover lets our customers benefit from that expertise. The system brings us closer to our goal to close the loop and produce panels made entirely from old chipboard and other pre-consumer or post-consumer wood. With a need to reduce our reliance on natural resources, that’s far from a bad thing.”

Not all products from Unilin Panels are made from chipboard though, and with MDF behind products such as Clicwall and Fibralux the journey towards circularity has only just begun.

The wood fibres used for these products demand a pure and high-grade source that has been impossible to replace with recycled materials like those collected by Recover. Until now that is. Unilin’s world-first technology is now turning reclaimed wood into fibres suitable for use in these products.

THE FUTURE

By 2030 Unilin aims to replace 25% of its MDF wood mix with recycled fibres, increasing as it moves further into the future. The systems and streams in Recover will be important to this. At the moment, Unilin can reclaim MDF offcuts of all kinds through the system. The advanced cleaning and sorting used in its recycling technology is even capable of separating the material from edging strips, facings and other contaminants – MDF waste meeting the requirements is simply isolated as a material to maintain its purity as a source.

There’s also a challenge to make being an active part of Recover open to small businesses and this is something Unilin is working on.

“In the Netherlands we’ve introduced Wood Loop, which brings Recover to our smaller customers,” said Mr Van Hoye. “They still have an important part to play, but since the logistics were more complex, we had to come up with a novel solution that uses the existing distribution route.

“A QR-enabled collection box allows smaller quantities of unwanted wood to be reclaimed, returned to the distributor and then sent to our hubs once the volume is high enough. The project is running well, and it looks to be a solid model for bringing Recover to small maker-style businesses, cabinetry and fit-out companies that have a small but regular demand for our products.

“Our customers are key in making Unilin Panels a truly circular product – without their involvement we simply can’t achieve our goal,” added Mr Van Hoye. “This is why Recover is so important to our future, along with our investment in recycling all types of wood waste into all types of chipboard and fibreboard products. It’s a large part of our contribution to a circular economy.

“Recover is in demand in other regions and we’re already joining the dots to make it a reality for customers across the world.”