Falmouth Joinery Firm takes a Spokeshave to its Carbon Footprint
Cornwall’s carbon footprint promises to get a little smaller with the efforts of a Falmouth joinery firm who have begun turning industrial waste into cost-effective fuel for heating.
L&R Unique Furniture and Joinery at Herniss, near Falmouth, who specialise in bespoke joinery and furniture projects, have invested in new equipment that will turn their yearly output of sawdust and wood offcuts into fuel for homes with open fires, log burners or Rayburn-type stoves.
The launch of Unique Eco Fuels comes as pressure mounts on government and businesses across the country to reduce climate change.
The idea came about as part of a regular risk assessment where staff were trying to dispose of a mountain of sawdust and wood waste that, if left, would have been considered a fire risk under today’s stringent Health and Safety regulations.
The obvious way of dealing with the problem would have been sending the waste to a commercial landfill site but L&R’s owners, who already use sustainable wood in their joinery and furniture making, wanted a greener option.
After extensive research, the firm made substantial investment in new machinery at their workshop, to convert the waste into usable fuel briquettes.
Paul Rutter, one of L&R’s founders, said: “We looked at the amount of sawdust we were producing and decided we simply had to find a way of dealing with this waste that didn’t involve sending it to landfill.
“We didn’t want to put it in a hole in the ground when it could be put to a better use. Dumping it seemed a criminal waste of Earth’s resources. “We hope this new, environmentally sensitive and cost-effective fuel source, will present an interesting alternative for many people in Cornwall who have fires, stoves or wood burners already installed in their homes.
“The wood we use for our furniture comes from entirely sustainable sources and no new trees are felled in order to make this new heating fuel, making it one of the greenest options for heating a home.”
The briquettes, made at the L&R workshop in Herniss near Falmouth, are formed by chipping and compressing the offcuts and the wood’s natural resin becomes a binding agent to help them keep their form.
Overall, wood heating offers perhaps the most cost-effective route to using renewable energy and is cheaper than many energy conservation measures for reducing fossil carbon emissions. Indeed, wood-fuelled heating is expected to see something of a renaissance thanks to rising costs of fossil-fuel heating options.
Another benefit of the new machinery is it has capacity to deal with more wood waste than L&R produces in a year so the firm is now offering to pay other firms for wood waste that they would otherwise have to pay to dispose of.
“We can take on 200 tonnes a year and we see that expanding as more people hear about what we’re doing,” added Paul, “We will pick up their waste ourselves and pay them for it. Hopefully, our method of dealing with wood waste will interest other firms who care about their green credentials and want to save some money at the same time.”
Unique Ecofuels briquettes can be bought from L&R Unique Furniture and Joinery, Herniss Business Park, Longdowns, nr Falmouth, TR10 9BZ. More information is available at www.uniqueecofuels.co.uk