Wood industry representative organisations the Wood Recyclers Association and the Wood Panel Industry Federation are assessing a third draft of the voluntary wood protocol, which has been put together by WRAP. Both will go back to the Waste and Resources Action Programme with comments at the end of November.
The main aim of the protocol is to enable wood recyclers to more easily distinguish wood packaging waste from mixed wood waste explained Rick Wilcox, secretary of the WRA. “In the past there have been concerns about the amount of wood packaging being claimed. This protocol is being designed to ensure more accurate reporting,” he said.
The protocol follows last year's government investigation into inaccuracies in data reporting in the wood sector in 2002. The investigation began in April 2003 after the reported 2002 recycling figures revealed a huge jump from the wood waste recycled the year before.
Mr Wilcox said the wood industry was a responsible industry that wanted to raise standards and was confident there would be a high sign up rate to the protocol amongst his members.
Companies which sign up to the protocol will be required to have a weighbridge on site to identify the exact amount of wood coming in, and they will need specially trained staff to identify packaging waste within mixed loads of wood waste.
Once adopted, one of the first stages of the protocol agreement will be to implement defined training programmes so that two or three members of staff at a wood recycling site have the skills to identify packaging waste.
The wood sector is likely to be the first sector in the industry to adopt such a protocol. However, discussions about a plastics protocol are also taking place, after the sector suffered similar problems to the wood industry in the area of packaging waste reporting, back in 2002. (see letsrecycle.com story)
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