• Waste utilisation to aid industrial growth, says RMRDC boss
Indication has emerged that Lagos generates 294,979.9 tonnes of wood wastes, while its neighbouring Ogun State, Abeokuta in particular, produces over 2,288 cubic metres daily.

A document made available to The Guardian by the Raw Material Research and Development Council (RMRDC) stated that such wastes could be tapped for industrial utilisation, economic growth and job creation.

Its Director General, Prof. Hussaini Doko Ibrahim, said: “The forest industry in Nigeria contributed significantly to local and international trade in the 1960s to 1980s.”

The industry, which includes the informal and formal wood products manufacturing outfits, such as the pulp and paper mills, sawmills, ply mills, particles board mills and furniture factories, contributed significantly to foreign exchange earnings locally.

He added: “Unfortunately, since the 1990s, some factors have combined to limit sustainable development of the industry. These include thinning availability of economic wood species and increasing dependence on outdated equipment and technology by the numerous small-scale processors.”

Ibrahim said more than 140,000m3 of wastes are generated in Nigeria daily by wood industries, apart from the 60 per cent of the total trees harvested and left in the forests after harvesting and transportation.

“The wastes cause considerable environmental and health hazards. Most of the wastes are burnt, during which they release harmful pollutants into the atmosphere.

“In addition, chemicals such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and dioxin used to treat wood are carcinogenic and the wastes dumped into the environment decompose and emit methane gas in addition to causing blockage and flooding during the raining season,” he explained.

The RMRDC boss observed that “there is need to institute wood waste management principles, streamline wood waste production and promote their recovery and recycling in Nigeria.”

One of the challenges, he said, is that most of the operators have low technical knowhow and capital input, and their technical efficiency fall below 60 per cent and require 88 per cent cost-saving device to become efficient producers.

More than 80 per cent of the population depend on wood biomass for their domestic energy generation in Nigeria, and this leads to acute deforestation.

Available statistics indicate that the forest estate in Nigeria is less that six per cent of the land area, while the total volume of useable wood down to 30cm cutting diameter in the forest resources is 437,507,205cm3.

He advised that urgent steps must be taken to curtail the use of wood for domestic energy generation, saying: “Globally, there is a growing awareness on the utilisation of wood wastes in the forms of briquettes and pellets as domestic or industrial fuel.”

The use of wood wastes to produce energy opens opportunities for sustainable energy production locally.  It will also open up avenue for substitution of wood wastes biomass for fossil fuels and development of industries producing bio-based products.

An important way of promoting utilisation of wood waste for energy generation is through co-firing.

The co-firing approach burns biomass together with other non-biomass fuels.  There are several examples of co-firing of wood with coal across Europe. The approach allows wood fuel to be introduced into the commercial energy system at relatively low cost and risk. These developments have made wood waste an internationally traded commodity.

According to Wood Recyclers Association in 2021, about 4.5 million tonnes of wood wastes were generated in the United Kingdom, of which 1.3 million tonnes were recycled.

Canada exports one million tonnes of waste wood pellets to Europe as raw material for power plants as substitutes to fossil fuel. Also in Australia, utilisation of wood wastes at large-scale results in a yearly revenue of about 7.3 million Euros.