Chapter 15 Wood Preservation
As with many materials, reuse of treated wood may be a vi-
able alternative to disposal. In many situations treated wood
removed from its original application retains sufficient du-
rability and structural integrity to be reused in a similar ap-
plication. Generally, regulatory agencies also recognize that
treated wood can be reused in a manner that is consistent
with its original intended end use.
The potential for recycling preservative-treated wood de-
pends on several factors, including the type of preservative
treatment and the original use. Researchers have demon-
strated that wood treated with heavy metals can be chipped
or flaked and reused to form durable panel products or
wood–cement composites. However, this type of reuse has
not yet gained commercial acceptance. Techniques for ex-
traction and reuse of the metals from treated wood have also
been proposed. These include acid extraction, fungal degra-
dation, bacterial degradation, digestion, steam explosion, or
some combination of these techniques. All these approaches
show some potential, but none is currently economical. In
most situations landfill disposal remains the least expensive
option. For treated wood used in residential construction,
one of the greatest obstacles is the lack of an efficient pro-
cess for collecting and sorting treated wood. This is less of a
problem for products such as railroad ties and utility poles.
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Figure 15–7. Wood preservative leaching, environmen-
tal mobility, and effects on aquatic insects were evalu-
ated at this wetland boardwalk in western Oregon.