Sustainable forest-based industries

The positive impacts in the wood sector of “cascading use” and “circularity” approaches

Positive impacts of deploying cascading use and circularity in the wood sector include:

©Pierre Bouillon

• decoupling economic growth from quantitative resource use, by promoting waste prevention, ecodesign, reuse and recycling;
• extracting and generating more added-value from wood through resource and energy efficiency;
• identifying new uses in wood resource and capitalize on them;
• converting more forest biomass “waste” into bioproducts contributing to the circular bioeconomy;
• improving environmental footprint as much as product quality;
• taking into consideration expectations from citizens and consumers towards sustainable wood value chains and develop “progress strategies”;
• giving evidence to consumers that sustainable practices are used at every stage of a product’s pre-purchase life, from forest management, wood harvesting, milling, manufacturing to packaging and shipping.