Práticas de economia circular no sistema produtivo de painéis de madeira

Abstract

The scarcity of natural resources linked to excess waste without proper disposal has become a worldwide concern, including in the wood panel production system, where it is necessary to adopt new methodologies that corroborate both. Given this problem, the present study aimed to identify current and potential circular economy practices for the wood panel production system. Initially, searches were carried out in the literature to identify and select articles relevant to the theme, in addition to verifying the studies that encompass the circular economy in the wood panel production system. With the selected articles, it was evident that the wood panel sector works with the adoption of environmental practices, however, there is also a deficit of works related to the circular economy in the panel industry. Then, flowcharts of the production system of the reconstituted wood panels were elaborated, with approaches of biological and technical cycles, through which it is possible to observe signs of circularity in some points of the production stage, namely, use of residues for combustion and energy generation, use of boiler ash and sludge from the treatment plant for composting and use of renewable energy. After this stage, the life cycle of the wooden panels was analyzed, researching the main hotspots through phase and life cycle processes, which helped in the identification of changes in the production system and in the construction of activities for the models of Business. Then, the circularity of the three panels adopted in this study was calculated, based on the 5, 10 and 15 years of useful life. Thus, it was observed that the three panels, MDP, MDF and OSB, do not show circularity in 5 years, already in 10 and 15 years of use there are signs of circularity, ranging from 10 to 50% and 40 to 60% of circularity, respectively, depending on the type of panel and the reuse scenarios analyzed. It was also found that none of the panels showed 100% circularity, which can be explained by the large amount of virgin material consumed, losses in the production process, losses involving the reuse of the product and lack of recycling approaches. As a result, the circular economy practices already existing in the wood panel production system were identified, related to the five business models employed in this study, which also made it possible to identify potential practices that aim to corroborate the increase in circularity.