[Reprinted from the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 

 Vol. 8. No. 2. page 102. February, 1916.1 



THE UTILIZATION OF WOOD WASTE 1 



Mark Twain says, "We all talk about the weather, 

 but nothing is done." So it is with wood waste 

 utilization. The lumbermen are interested, of course, 

 but their interest is tempered by weariness and re- 

 strained by skepticism. They are open to conviction 

 but would like to see anyone who can convince them. 

 Much the same situation may be found where any 

 of our great industrial wastes are concerned. Those 

 who are responsible for the wastes are so close to them 

 and so long familiar with them that they have come 

 to regard them as the unavoidable accompaniment 

 of the industry. Moreover, plans for waste utiliza- 

 tion commonly involve the extension of a business 

 into regions which, however familiar they may be to 

 those doing business in them, are new and strange 

 to the makers of the waste. Conversely, those whose 

 specialized experience might enable them to utilize the 

 waste to advantage, hesitate to incur the large capital 

 expenditure required for establishing an industry de- 

 pendent upon a raw material over which they have 

 no control and the supply of which may cease at any 

 time, as, for example, when a lumber mill burns 

 down. 



These are real and serious obstacles in the way of 

 the utilization of wastes, but the things which anyone 

 can do easily bring no great rewards. The world be- 

 longs to those who overcome difficulties and nowhere 

 does it offer richer promise of potential wealth made 

 actual than in the colossal wastes of lumbering. 



The figures involved are of astronomical proportions 

 and consequently make little more impression on the 

 mind than the distances of the fixed stars. Let us, 

 however, try once more really to comprehend them. 

 On a total annual cut of 50 billion feet board measure 

 of merchantable lumber, at least 75 billion feet, or 

 about 112,000,000 tons, of wood waste are produced. 

 For every man, woman and child in the country there 

 is therefore annually wasted more than a ton of wood. 



The proportion of waste to merchantable lumber 

 varies within wide limits with the kind of wood. In 

 the lumbering of hardwoods, according to Goodman, 

 only 15 per cent of the weight of the standing timber 



1 Address before the 8th Annual Meeting of the American Institute of 

 Chemical Engineers, Baltimore, January 12 to 15, 1916. 



(I) 



