Furniture manufacturing resource efficiency

Furniture manufacturing processes can generate high levels of waste. Any action you can take to reduce or even eliminate waste can save you money and reduce your business' impact on the environment. Where your business does produce waste you need to decide the best option for dealing with it.

Reuse furniture manufacturing waste

After elimination and reduction, reusing waste products is the next best way to use your business' resources more efficiently. You should ensure that the maximum volumes of waste are reused, for example by:

• identifying the smallest usable component in your manufacturing process - any waste material below this minimum size will not be reusable
• redesigning your product range to incorporate waste materials as either an essential component or a design feature
• producing a new product from waste materials
• processing waste to incorporate into another product
• using waste as packaging materials for finished goods during shipping and transporting

If you can't reuse the waste your business produces on site, look closely at the other businesses in your supply chain - your waste could be another organisation's raw material.

Furniture manufacturing waste to energy

Investing in a combustion plant can enable your business to generate heat from wood waste. The benefits of wood combustion include:

• a reduction in your reliance on outside energy sources
• reduced fuel costs
• lower landfill and waste disposal costs
• increased self-sufficiency

You must ensure that the waste you use in a combustion plant doesn't contain any halogenated materials that include PVC edgings or chlorine. Burning these materials will mean that your plant does not comply with the strict emissions regulations that are in place. This would also produce acid gases that erode ductwork.