The Earth Overshoot Day, announced on August 1 by Global Footprint Reminder, is an urgent reminder to humanity that it must restrict itself within planetary boundaries in its quest for economic growth.
Our demand for ecological resources and services now exceeds what the Earth can renew this year.
Human activities are the primary drivers of climate change, mainly through the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. The biggest contributors to these emissions are energy use, industry, agriculture, transportation, and buildings.
The Buildings and Construction sector accounts for nearly 37% of global emissions, one of the largest emitters of ozone-depleting Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), according to the Buildings Material and the Climate report by UNEP.
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While current emissions-reduction strategies in buildings and construction sector look towards material use from sources, such as sustainable timber, and responsible forest management to reduce emissions and promote responsible consumption, few initiatives are focusing on wood valorisation methods to reduce, reuse, recycle and upcycle wood waste from construction and demolition (C&D) and furniture waste, which have a massive potential to reduce deforestation by utilising secondary wood as abundant and cost-effective raw material source.
Also Read: EU Nature Restoration Law Adopted
Buildings, for instance, contain enormous amounts of wood – a natural and renewable resource with good chemical properties- among other materials. Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste contains significant quantities of embodied wood but this material is mostly either landfilled or incinerated, not recovered.
In the EU, wood demand is much higher than supply. In future, the gap will widen further, creating a chronic shortage. For this reason, exploring viable alternate sources to meet wood demand is urgent.
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W2W is trying to solve one of humanity’s biggest challenges: prevent deforestation, and thus, biodiversity loss. Biodiversity loss is also inextricably linked with climate change.
By utilising wood waste from C&D and furniture sectors using advanced sorting and separation tech, W2W aims to reduce pressure on virgin forests, increase uptake of secondary raw materials through innovative upcycling processes, thereby combating deforestation and promoting a circular economy.
What we offer:
W2W’s multi-dimensional cascade valorisation approach from C&D and furniture waste consists of four key pillars:
- Advanced Separation and Sorting Technologies
- Upcycling Processes and Technologies
- Digital Tools for Improving Circular Flows of Secondary Materials
- Supportive Framework in Policy, Market and Skills
This process will reduce the need for virgin materials, cut waste destined for landfills and incineration facilities, create value-added products from waste and promote closed-loop systems to extend the useful life of materials, supporting the transition to a circular economy.
The wood cascade valorisation framework evaluates all possible pathways to process wood feedstock. W2W is assessing both existing and new technologies to find the ideal valorisation pathways, including the characterisation of the available feedstock as well as the dynamic Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to provisionally consider each potential route.
Additionally, factors like supply and demand, logistics optimisation, and supply chain management will create a dynamic framework aimed at maximising the source recovery potential based on circular economy principles and industrial symbiosis.