MDF produced using recycled fibres from MDF Recovery’s process has been shown to reduce the environmental impact of the board, according to new Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) findings.
The study, carried out by Eunomia Research and Consulting Ltd with funding from Innovate UK, found that incorporating 30% recycled fibre results in a 12% reduction in carbon footprint during the board’s manufacturing process.
Replacing virgin fibres in this way was found to lower environmental impacts across most of the categories examined in the analysis.
The report also notes that further reductions in carbon footprint could be achieved by using renewable or biomass-based energy in production. Increasing the recycled fibre content in the boards could further improve environmental performance.
The research compares MDF made with various ratios of virgin and recovered wood fibre to boards produced from 100% virgin fibres. It examines MDF with 20%, 30%, and 60% recovered fibre, all derived from the MDFR process, and evaluates their environmental profiles using the EU Commission’s Environmental Footprint (EF3.1) methodology across all cradle-to-gate Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) categories.
“Recovered fibres produced by the MDFR process and subsequently dried to the level required for MDF board manufacture use less energy in their production than virgin wood fibres,” the study concludes.
“Therefore, using recovered fibres from the MDFR process in place of virgin wood fibres in MDF production is beneficial for climate change mitigation, photochemical ozone formation, land use, and fossil fuel resource consumption.
“It is therefore recommended to maximise the proportion of recovered fibres from the MDFR process in future MDF production.”
The report notes that its impact categories differ from those used in an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). Planned revisions to the LCA will more fully account for biomass and end-of-life wood products as energy sources, the biogenic nature of the material, and electricity from renewable sources.
These considerations are expected to enable further reductions of 30–50% in kgCO2 equivalent.
