Forest Products and Circular Economy Strategies: A Canadian Perspective

Bruno Gagnon, Xavier Tanguay, Mourad Amor and Anthony F. Imbrogno
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Bruno Gagnon: Economic Analysis Division, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, ON K1A 0E4, Canada
Xavier Tanguay: Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory on Sustainable Engineering and Ecodesign (LIRIDE), Department of Civil and Building Engineering, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC J1K 2R1, Canada
Anthony F. Imbrogno: Economic Analysis Division, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, Ottawa, ON K1A 0E4, Canada

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: The Government of Canada has embraced circular economy and is supporting an increasing number of initiatives in the field. However, implementation examples remain scattered and certain stakeholders are eager to see a greater level of commitment from policy makers. The purpose of this study is to provide a Canadian perspective on how, and to what extent, forest products are compatible with circular economy strategies. This topic was investigated through interviews with 16 Canadian experts in eco-design, circular economy, forest products and/or waste management, with a focus on construction and packaging. Efforts made by forest industries at the manufacturing stage to reduce resource consumption were acknowledged, but the implementation of other circular economy strategies, such as reuse, recycling and energy recovery, is uneven. While there is low-hanging fruit for incremental improvements, such as the processing of recovered lumber in wood panels and not mixing cardboard fibres with other paper streams to avoid downcycling, several barriers to the widespread adoption of the most promising strategies were identified. The experts consulted proposed several solutions to accelerate the deployment of circular economy strategies for forest products, for which government interventions would need to be tailored to the different policy readiness levels (PRLs) observed in the construction and packaging sectors. With circularity having economy-wide implications, setting a clear policy direction at the national level, with a circular economy roadmap for Canada for example, could accelerate coordinated implementation within and across sectors, including forest industries.

Keywords: circular economy; forest sector; construction materials; packaging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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