Developing recycling technology for fibreboards

The EcoReFibre project aims to develop and demonstrate commercially viable technologies for sorting and separating secondary fiberboard raw materials from post-consumer wood-products waste, to align fiberboard value chains with EU maximum recycling strategies.

Having grown year-on-year since the 1970s, the global production and post-consumer waste management of fiberboards have surpassed 100 million m³ and 40 million m³ per year respectively since 2015.

The EcoReFibre project responds to the absence of commercially viable technologies for recycling medium- and high-density fiberboards. These products are presently manufactured entirely from virgin wood and, upon waste management, are incinerated for energy recovery. EcoReFibre technology outputs aim to subsequently help substitute up to 25% of virgin wood material inputs with secondary fiberboard raw materials in fiberboard production.

Helps to secure secondary raw materials

This project also sets out to address the constraining pressures on current levels of particleboard manufacture from recycled materials, pressures that arise from the growing levels of post-consumer fiberboard waste entering wood recycling streams. By developing technologies to separate and utilize fiberboard waste fractions, EcoReFibre will help to secure the secondary raw materials from wood waste needed to maintain and grow current levels of particleboard production from recycled materials.

EcoReFibre technology development and upscaling are partly steered by assessing net environmental and social lifecycle impact gains in comparison to conventional fiberboard production value chains from virgin materials.

How much fiberboard becomes waste?

The project recently launched a crowd wisdom survey to map the amount of fiberboard that become waste in Europe. You can read more about the survey here: EcoReFibre Launches Survey to Predict Fibreboard Waste in Europe Using Crowd Wisdom. External link, opens in new window.

Read more about the EcoReFibre on the project website. There you can also subscribe to the project's newsletter.

Watch a short video on the project: