Life cycle assessment of end-of-life engineered wood

Medium-density fibreboards (MDFs) and particleboards are engineered woods well-known for durability and structural strength. Wood shavings or discarded wooden products can be used for MDF and particleboard production. However, engineered woods are hard to manage at the end of their useful life due to the utilisation of binders or resins, which are known forms of carcinogens. Like other wood products, MDFs and particleboards can either be recovered for material recycling or energy recovery or sent to the landfill. This paper aims to identify the sustainable circular economy pathways for waste MDF and particleboard management, comparing three different scenarios: landfill, recycling, and energy recovery (incineration) via life cycle assessment methodologies (LCA). Life cycle assessment has been conducted using ReCiPe methodology of conducting life cycle assessment. The data analysis was conducted in MS Excel using @Risk v8.2 add-on function. The analysis was based on relative contribution of the impacts across the individual life cycle stages and the specific toxicity impacts were represented on a tornado chart to reflect the percentage spread of impacts across the life cycle phase. Finally, uncertainty analysis was conducted using Monte Carlo Simulation. The results showed that material recovery is preferred over energy recovery for most of the impact categories. However, energy recovery is preferred in the case of climate change and fossil fuel depletion. For both types of engineered wood products considered in this paper, end-of-life management of engineered woods has less impact than the production process. Toxicity impacts are the greatest for energy recovery compared with landfill and material recovery.