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Abstract Reusing and recycling post-consumer wood can help mitigate GHG emissions and reduce the risks of biodiversity loss by saving primary resources. A robust understanding of the post-consumer wood composition and its cascading potential is critical to enable this. However, there is currently limited research on the topic. This study contributes to filling the knowledge gap by sorting 54 tons of post-consumer wood at two industrial recycling stations and one household recycling station in Norway and further developing a classification system with quantified cascading potentials for post-consumer wood. The results showed that 49–64 percent of the wood at the industrial recycling stations and 32 percent at the household recycling station was load-bearing and untreated solid wood. We argue that these categories have a good potential for reuse and recycling. The high percentages indicate an opportunity for increasing the recycling and reuse of post-consumer wood. However, we also discovered some misplaced preservative-treated materials and a percentage of fiberboards that exceed particleboard manufacturer limits, meaning that sorting before recycling is required. Furthermore, we investigated how the wood composition was influenced by the type of customer delivering wood to the recycling stations and found that households generally deliver lower quality post-consumer wood than industrial customers.

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Circular use of wood in Norway for improved sustainability and innovation - CircWOOD


The future Norwegian bioeconomy must use timber in the most resource-efficient manner. The circWOOD project is a Green Platform project that will look at all aspects of wood use in the Norwegian economy, with particular emphasis on reuse and recycling. The circWOOD project will provide technical support to the Green Platform sirkTRE project, but also operate independently. The focus of the circWOOD project is on analysing the flows for the timber resource through the Norwegian economy and finding new ways to improve the efficiency of use of this increasingly valuable resource. Efficiency will be improved by studying the quantities and types of timber that become available at the end of life and determining the different ways in which the wood can be reused for second lives, or even further down the value chain. In this way stored atmospheric carbon will stay in the Norwegian economy for a longer time. At the present time, there are gaps in our understanding of the availability and quality of reclaimed wood and how this will change going forward. This lack of knowledge is making investment decisions problematical. Apart from improving our understanding of wood availability, the project will also develop methods to ensure that whatever strategies and technologies are adopted, the environmental impacts are minimised and reduced compared to current practice. The gathering of data to support investment and policy decisions is not easy and the circWOOD project will explore ways of simplifying this process through the adoption of the latest methods of electronic data capture, data sharing and analysis. New technologies for the future bioeconomy will not be introduced without the proper policy framework and public acceptance. The circWOOD project will therefore address these vital issues, as well as studying the economic impacts.

Aktiv Sist oppdatert: 29.09.2025
Slutt: juli 2026
Start: jan 2022