Last month’s Renewable Energy Strategy once again raised the question of what the timber industry should be doing to reduce of the amount of wood waste going to landfill. As mentioned in our recent News article, the Renewable Energy Strategy consultation strongly endorsed the use of further measures to discourage the landfill of biomass waste, and there is an increasingly broad opinion that, given its potential uses, wood waste should not be landfilled at all. The landfill tax has recently been a key driver in diverting waste from landfill to other uses, with additional increases in the landfill tax having been announced in the 2009 Budget. Additional measures have now been proposed to ensure that the amount of waste going to landfill is drastically reduced – the Strategy notes that the UK is consulting later this year on the scope for banning certain materials or kinds of waste from landfill, and the Government has asked the Environment Agency to address ways of further tightening landfill gas emissions by tighter regulation. All of which raises the question, ‘What is the proposed use of the 6 million tonnes of waste wood are currently landfilled each year?’. The government is now viewing this waste biomass as an under-used resource which could provide a significant contribution to European renewable energy demands for heat and power whilst reducing the total amount of landfilled waste as the demand for biomass feedstock increases and biomass becomes a globally traded commodity. The Renewable Energy Strategy confirms that government thinking is to produce more bioenergy from wood waste in order fully exploit waste biomass currently going to landfill, which is likely to be increasingly regulated. The report also also briefly mentions the issue of contaminated waste, an area which the BWF would welcome clearer guidelines on in terms of use and classification of contaminated waste. We are interested to hear through the Strategy that the Government is supporting the initial development of a pilot for fuel quality criteria with the wood-fuel supply industry next year, which will involve HETAS, the woodfuel industry and Department of Energy and Climate Change. To see how the BWF are helping to address the issue of wood waste within the joinery sector, please click here, or browse our Environmental and Waste Management section