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Why Lazee Logs are good for the environment.

One of the questions we get asked at Lazee Logs is why are our logs good for the environment? After all, if we didn’t turn the sawdust produced from the Joinery into Lazee Logs, it would be sent to land fill or composted and not end up being burnt and thus putting Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere.

To answer this question, we need to look at the ways the waste sawdust generated by the joinery can be dealt with. Before the log-making machine was installed, the sawdust was extracted into a hopper, and then periodically disposed of at the local waste disposal transfer station. From there the two options are that the sawdust was put into landfill, or maybe composted along with other green waste.   

You may think that putting the sawdust into landfill or composting seems more ecologically beneficial to the environment than burning it where the carbon dioxide ends up directly into the atmosphere. (1)THIS IS NOT THE CASE and this is why.

The fact is that when wood burns there is a chemical reaction occurring that combines oxygen from the atmosphere with carbon in the wood to produce carbon dioxide (CO2) which is a greenhouse gas and considered bad for the environment. In the case of trees, this is however returning CO2 to the atmosphere that the tree had drawn from the atmosphere over its lifetime. This CO2 stays lockup in the timber until it’s burnt or rots away.

The process of timber rotting away or composting has two common scenarios. Firstly, the timber can rot away with abundant access to oxygen from the atmosphere. This process is referred to as (2)aerobic decay. Organisms eat away at the wood and ultimately produce among other nutrients, carbon dioxide, which ends up back in the atmosphere. The second scenario that is more likely in landfills and large scale composting is (3)anaerobic decay.  Anaerobic decay occurs when organisms eat away at the wood in an oxygen-deprived environment.  Instead of carbon dioxide being the main gaseous product, methane and nitrous oxide are produced.

(1)The thing is, methane is considered 21 times per volume worst for the environment and nitrous oxide 310 times worse per volume for the environment than carbon dioxide.

In conclusion, not only does our joinery manufacture products with wood that keeps carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for extended periods, our lazee logs ensure our sawdust waste doesn’t end up in the atmosphere in the form of methane or nitrous oxide gas. (Assuming the lazee logs are burnt) The use of lazee logs are a great way to help the environment and use a waste product for heating and/or cooking.

Ref:

(1)http://appliedmythology.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/the-shocking-carbon-footprint-of-compost.html

(2)http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/fundamentals/biology_anaerobic.htm

(3)http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/fundamentals/biology_aerobic.htm