From Forest to Incinerator: Wood Flooring Scraps as Energy

Here's another creative use of a wood manufacturing byproduct: According to The New York Times, the city of Kristianstad, Sweden, is taking scraps from wood flooring manufacturing plants and incinerating them to power its district heating grid, a system whereby heat is distributed to multiple buildings. The flooring manufacturing remnants are mixed with paper mill waste and municipal park tree trimmings and then burned. Also, many homes that are off the district heating grid have replaced their oil-burning furnaces with government-subsidized furnaces that burn wood pellets, another byproduct-derived heating source; burning pellets, The Times says, is actually more efficient and produces less carbon dioxide than burning logs does. The city's efforts are part of a comprehensive plan to wean itself off of fossil fuels by 2020.

Wood pellets like these can be made from all kinds of scrap wood, including remnants from the manufacture of wood flooring. Photo credit: D-Kuru/Wikimedia Commons.