Home
hamburger menu icon

Wood Products

Uses of Wood

The largest share of wood products are used for fuel.

The image: "wood_products2.svg" cannot be found!

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 1, with detail on the paper categories from FAO 2. Wood panels refer to products such as plywood, particle board, and fiberboard, and fiber finish refers primarily to fibers used in textiles.

World paper and paperboard demand is projected to grow to over 750 million tons per year by 2050 3.

Wood Impacts

The United States paper industry has the following current and potential energy needs.

The image: "paper_energy.svg" cannot be found!

Sources: The EPA's WAste Reduction Model (WARM) 4 for paper from virgin pulp and recycling, and Miller et al. 5 for best and potential new technology.

Paper can be recycled five to seven times before the fibers become too degraded 6.

Several alternatives to trees are under consideration as a source of fiber. The land use implications are as follows.

The image: "fiber_land_use.svg" cannot be found!

Fiber yields from several sources. Sources: Favero et al. al 7 and Hart 8.

The advancement of information and communication technology has not necessarily reduced paper demand as one might expect. Access to the Internet appears to have decreased the demand for newsprint, but it may have increased the demand for office paper 9, 10.

References

  1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. "2016 Global Forest Products Facts and Figures". 2017. ↩

  2. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. "Forest Products". 2017. ↩

  3. Confederation of European Paper Industries. "The Forest Fibre Industry: 2050 Roadmap to a low-carbon bio-economy". 2011. ↩

  4. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Waste Reduction Model, Version 15". Excel Spreadsheet. Accessed September 29, 2019. ↩

  5. Miller, T., Kramer, C., Fisher, A. "Bandwidth Study on Energy Use and Potential Energy Savings in U.S. Pulp and Paper Manufacturing". U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficency and Renewable Energy. June 2015. ↩

  6. Holmes, A. "How Many Times Can That Be Recycled?". Earth911. June 2017. ↩

  7. Favero, A., Thomas, V., Luettgen, C. "Life cycle and market review of the major alternative fibers for paper production". Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. April 2017. ↩

  8. Hart, P. "Wheat straw as an alternative pulp fiber". Tappi Journal 19, pp. 41-52. January 2020. ↩

  9. Hujala, M. "The role of information and communication technologies in paper consumption". International Journal of Business Information Systems 7(2), pp. 121-135. Ferbruary 2011. ↩

  10. Latta, G., Plantinga, A., Sloggy, M. "The Effects of Internet Use on Global Demand for Paper Products". Journal of Forestry 114(4), pp. 433-440. July 2016. ↩