Pioneer in recycling
Choose products made from recovered wood. What is that? Wood and wood waste that is no longer usable to another company - but it is for us. By opting for recovered wood, you save wood from combustion, thereby avoiding CO2 emissions and you also give the wood an extra life as new panels. The longer wood remains in circulation, the better!
But what exactly is recovered wood? It might be, for example remnants from wood processing companies. Examples include saw remnants from sawmills, production downtime, etc. But also by-products from activities such as sustainable forest management and verge maintenance. These curved or too thin logs are often not usable for high-quality applications such as planks or veneers.
The main type of recovered wood is recycled wood! Think of your old kitchen or desk, broken furniture, old interior fittings that are removed during renovations, broken shelves or pallets etc... By making the most of wood reuse, you can make a difference.
Where can you find these raw materials? We collect them from container parks, demolition companies, the packaging industry, etc... But also from you: from our customers via take-back programs. This is a win-win situation: you dispose of your residual materials, we reuse them in our products. Through such a smart collaboration; you as a company limit your ecological footprint and contribute to the circular economy.
Last year, we processed more than 900,000 tonnes of recycled wood and made it into new chipboard.
Can you make high-quality interior panels from used wood?
Absolutely, thanks to advanced sorting and cleaning systems! These are at the heart of our sustainable production system. You can use a combination of techniques (magnets, wind sifters, centrifuges, infrared, etc.) to remove all of the impurities from the wood supplied. These impurities also find their way to other industries to be reused as well. It is a unique system in which we continue to invest. Partly thanks to this high-tech sorting and cleaning process, our chipboard consists of 95% recycled wood.
Over the past 10 years, we have invested more than 30 million euros in this advanced sorting and cleaning installation.
World first: Unilin is the first company to recycle MDF
And what about MDF or HDF that’s not recyclable? Yes, for a long time it was impossible to recycle the millions of MDF/HDF boards produced annually on an industrial scale. Until now. We developed the unique technology to recover and reuse MDF and HDF wood fibres. With this world first, we are able to give MDF and HDF wood fibres a new lease of life. We have been rolling out this technology at our production sites since 2021.
By 2030, our MDF wood mix will contain 25% recycled fibres!
Wood waste as a raw material for green energy
What if wood is no longer usable as a raw material for products? Even then, we won't let it go to waste. In our production and in our own power plants we use wood waste to generate renewable energy. The result: less waste and fewer fossil fuels!