The wood panels are the main raw material for the manufacture of furniture, a source of pride in the manufacturing industry and the national symbol of beauty and design in the world.
The national furniture industry now employs 400,000 people and generates a turnover of € 27 billion, operating in the knowledge that the wood is a precious and scarce resource, which should be enhanced through its reuse and recycling as long as possible. The Italian production of panels is the world-class even in the recycling timber, bringing to life every year more than 3,000,000 tons of post-consumer recycled wood, without any government incentives.
Today, increasing amounts of this important resource are excluded from the production of panels and used as fuel for electricity production incentive, putting in serious trouble the entire sector of the wood and furniture.
Observe the sustainable use of wood, it means:
• Environmental benefits: a recent scientific study attests to a double environmental impact of combustion compared to recycling;
• Social benefits: for every ton of recycled wood is generated jobs 10 times greater than the combustion;
• Economic benefits for the community: burning wood, in 2012, it cost 390 million euro of government incentives. (Source: Statistical Report 2012, GSE)
The Italian producers of wood panels with strength to ask the government that undertakes a strategy that privileges the reuse and recycling incentives and the production of energy from biomass only in the event that they can not be used in the wood-furniture.
This is in short the Manifesto of Assopannelli presented at the Wood Action Days, which took place September 22 to 24 at the European Parliament with seminars and conferences on the potential of the wood industry in the revival of growth in Europe, and continued thereafter at national level with specific events in the different countries participating in EPF from 29 September to 3 October. A real general mobilization of the industries of wood to support a more responsible use of wood resources.
“The Italian production of panels represents excellence worldwide also in the recycling timber, bringing to life every year more than 3,000,000 tons of recycled wood, without any government incentive,“ he pointed out last October 1, the president of Assopannelli, Paolo Fantoni, in the presence of Gian Luca Galletti, Minister of the Environment, and Hermes Realacci, Chairman Committee on Environment and Territory of the Chamber of Deputies.
“Italy is the largest importer in the world of pellets and firewood, but the timber industry spends only 20% of its forest growth. And for businesses is increasingly difficult to find timber. We are not a priori against the construction of biomass power plants in the country, but we judge negatively the distortion to the market of raw materials that arises from the grant of contributions that distort markets historically ranked by the rules of free trade. “
The European Commission has suggested to all member countries of the inclusion of the principle of using a cascade of wood, directing energy uses of wood material only where it is no longer usable by industry. “We welcome the interest shown by the Ministry of the Environment - concludes Fantoni - and we hope to set a long-term strategy that allows to make the most of a valuable resource such as wood, without compromising any of its possible uses.“