The world’s first timber structure, made from cross-laminated timber and glulam upcycled from construction scrap, will be showcased at BuildZero in London starting next week.
Known as ‘CascadeUp,’ the 3.5-metre high, 2.5-metre wide, 2-metre deep modular demonstration follows years of collaboration between the University College London’s Circular Economy Lab and UK CLT, an R&D mill manufacturing mass timber from recycled wood off demolition sites.
“We can’t solve the climate crisis without transforming our built environment,” said Dr Colin Rose, Senior Research Fellow at UCL and founding partner at UK CLT.
“CascadeUp fully embraces circularity – taking wood that would be chipped and downcycled or sent to the incinerator and remanufacturing it to make a sustainable alternative to high-carbon structural products such as concrete, steel, and brick.”
Can CLST and GlulamST help reduce the global squeeze for wood fibre?
Last year, Wood Central reported that engineering reused timbers into new products dubbed cross-laminated secondary timbers (or CLST) and glulam secondary timbers (or GlulamST) could lead to 10,000 additional dwellings being constructed in the UK alone.
Spun out from a 2016 research project, the July 2020 study, which led to the formation of ‘UK CLT’, showed no significant difference between the compression stiffness and strength of CLST and traditional cross-laminated timbers. In addition, a newer study published in January 2024 demonstrated the structural integrity of the recycled timbers, subject to full-scale bending tests.
“This innovation provides a low-carbon alternative to structural materials such as concrete, steel and masonry,” Dr Rose said: “CLST and glulamST have a fully traceable, local, socially fair supply chain…(and) when no further reuse is possible, the timber can be recycled into panel products (chipboard or MDF) and then finally incinerated for energy.”
The push to do more with salvaged timbers comes as the world scrambles to secure more and more wood – with the latest FAO estimates predicting that demand for timbers, especially industrial roundwood, will climb more than 49% over the next 30 years.
“Demand for products (namely mass timber, artificial cellulosic fibres and bioenergy) is estimated to increase roundwood consumption by up to 272 million cubic metres per year by 2050 compared with 2020,” it said, with “multiple pathways combining increased harvesting and processing efficiency, recycling and planting of forests and trees…(which) can lead to sustainable wood supply in volumes to meet increased demand.”
Next-Gen Skip Bins: Could Robots Recycle Timber and Steel?
The push to manufacture new timber products from waste comes as Australian researchers are looking to use AI and robotics to improve the sorting of demolition materials – pinpointing recyclable steel, concrete and timbers that can be used in new projects.
The technology not only has the potential to shake up the construction waste industry, responsible for 44% of all waste produced Australia-wide but could be instrumental in driving the global pivot to a fully circular economy.
That is, according to Monash University researcher Diani Sirimewan, who has published “Semi-supervised segmentation for construction and demolition waste recognition in the wild,” using deep learning and AI to create a “skip bin master”—trawling through Melbourne construction sites to recognise contained and recyclable materials.
“After construction and demolition waste is collected, it is often laid down on the floor, with labourers manually picking out the valuable materials such as timber,” said Ms Sirimewan, a PhD candidate from Monash University. And “because labourers are manually sorting contaminated waste, there are also health and safety concerns, as well as the need to move heavy and bulky materials.”
That’s when Ms Sirimewan decided to use deep learning and AI to trace materials “in the wild” across Melbourne’s construction sites. “If you feed a new image to the model, the model recognises whether it’s concrete, timber or metal,” she said.
- For more information about the circularity of timber and timber-based products, please review Wood Central’s special report.
