New ways to make use of any old wood

From The Sunday Times
November 16, 2008
Clare Gascoigne

ABOUT 85% of waste wood in the UK goes into landfill. From building firms to local councils, organisations dump around 8.5m tons of wood into holes in the ground every year.
“It’s been hugely frustrating for us,” says Vicki Hughes, strategic development director of Hadfield Wood Recyclers in Droylsden, Manchester. “We can collect and clean any grade of wood and it always seemed criminal to send it to landfill.” Times are changing. Hadfield has a 10-year contract to supply recycled wood to the Wilton 10 biomass power station, run by private utilities company Sembcorp. Hadfield created a sister company, UK Wood Recycling, and built a wood recycling facility half a mile from the Teesside power plant.
Hadfield, which has for 20 years been turning waste wood into animal bedding and panel board, is looking to build more recycling plants, particularly in southeast England, and is negotiating with other biomass energy producers. It hopes to double its £8m turnover in the next five years, and the key to this new market is the development of large biomass power plants, which can burn the poor-quality wood that would otherwise go to landfill.
“The problem has always been what to do with low-grade waste wood,” says Hughes. “Biomass is one solution. We send less than 0.5% of what comes to our sites to landfill.” Critical to this is the technology for “cleaning” waste wood; much of Hadfield’s machinery has been designed by its engineers to improve the quality of the finished product.
The company, which grew out of a family farming business, diversified into waste management in the 1970s. In the mid1980s Geoff Hadfield, managing director, decided to concentrate on wood recycling. The company employs more than 100 people on its two sites.
Entrepreneurs are increasingly having to balance generating profits against the environmental or social impact of their businesses. Rebecca Harding, managing director of Delta Economics, a consultancy that promotes sustainable development through entrepreneurship, says: “Twenty years ago entrepreneurs would have said it was all about money but there has been a big change.” A recent survey of 1,500 entrepreneurs by Delta found that nearly half claimed they had set up their businesses to “make a difference”, and were pursuing social, environmental or job-creation goals.
Liz Nelson, development manager at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, part of the Said Business School at Oxford University, agrees. “What drives any entrepreneur is the same – a desire to solve a problem. When it comes to social or environmental problems, grants have their limitations.”
Says Hughes: “The challenge for us over the next five years is to support the next wave of biomass plants and set up a sustainable source of wood fuel.” Wilton 10 is one of four large wood-fired biomass plants in the UK, along with Slough Heat and Power in Berkshire, run by Scottish and Southern Energy; Shotton in North Wales, run by Gaz de France; and Steven’s Croft in Lockerbie, run by E.on. Four more plants are proposed or under way in Wales, Devon and Warwickshire. Recycled wood is not the only biomass source – other facilities coming on stream use crops such as willow and miscanthus and food or agricultural waste.
“We have to do a lot of work to educate our suppliers, explaining why you can’t put all grades of wood in one skip,” says Hughes. “The incentive has been created by government recycling targets and increases in landfill tax.” It is not only money that fuels growth in recycling, she adds: “There’s an environmental conscience among small businesses. Even when it’s not the most economic thing to do, it’s ethically right.”