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Kyle Johnson: Sawmills are closing. How does that effect us?

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11 Apr, 2024

This post was originally published on Healthy Forest

Editors note: Kyle Johnson is a forester with the Bureau of Land Management’s Missoula Field Office. Mr. Johnson is not affiliated with Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities but gave us permission to share his message.

It seems like the topic everyone is talking about these days: the closures of Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake, MT, and Roseburg Forest Products particle board plant in Missoula. From the office break room, to presenting a guest lecture at the University, to my neighbors talking the street – everyone wants to know: How will these mills closing effect us? My short answer is: How will they not effect us? That answer is a little snippy but not wrong. The truth is the closures will have direct effects and indirect effects, like dropping a pebble in a pond. The immediate splash catches your attention, but the ripples last much longer and reach much further.

This week I had the chance to visit a timber sale area that we offered several years ago near Potomac, MT. The project was primarily a Ponderosa Pine thinning, where we reduced the stocking of the stand to improve forest health and resiliency, reduce hazardous fuels and risk of catastrophic wildfire near homes, and produced just about a million board feet of timber which went to Pyramid Mountain Lumber (the resulting sawdust from milling likely went to Roseburg). The footprint of the sale area was just under 400 acres, and all that work was done while still returning around $80,000 to our healthy forests fund (which gets spent on planting, young tree thinning and the like).

As I walked through the area and listened to our fuels staff make plans to implement a broadcast burn on the site, I was struck by the thought that this timber sale likely wouldn’t happen today. The main reason for that is that Pyramid was the last sawmill in our area that would take Ponderosa Pine (a species which takes longer to dry and has more limited utility than Douglas-fir or Western larch). So, if we offered that sale again today there is a real possibility that we’d have to make it a stewardship contract and offset the cost of hauling logs to a mill farther away with agency funds. Rather than a timber sale with a positive return, this project would cost money and reduce our ability to accomplish other work. That’s what I mean by direct and immediate effects of the mill closures.

The indirect effects will take a little longer to feel, but they will be just as if not more impactful. Many of our goals and objectives at the Missoula Field Office are tied to forest restoration, fuels reduction, habitat improvement and the like. All of those are active management programs where real acres are getting treated. That means real operators with real tractors getting the work done to our specifications.

The point here is that while we government types do a lot of planning, and writing and talking about good projects, we don’t actually do the work. That is the marriage between the public and private sectors and our ability to implement projects depends on a robust pool of skilled operators. When we offer a contract for bid, be that for a fish habitat improvement, road blading, timber harvest or anything else, we need quality operators to bid on them and get the work done- otherwise we’ve accomplished nothing. In a nutshell, we can’t do our job without the operators. When a mill closes, those operator’s ability to survive and make a living is diminished, and pretty soon we don’t have contractors to bid on our projects. Those are the ripple effects that may take years to play out.

This week I received our last log load slips from Pyramid Mountain Lumber, a mill that has been in operation for 75 years, and certainly a mainstay for my whole career. And while this makes me sad and reflective, it’s not my job that was lost. My heart goes out to those folks who’ve lost their jobs and all their families. That’s the real tragedy.

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Source: Healthy Forest

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In June, I had the privilege of attending the 2025 E-Waste World, Battery Recycling, Metal Recycling, and ITAD & Circular Electronics Conference & Expo events in Frankfurt, Germany.

Speaking in the ITAD & Circular Electronics track on a panel with global Circular Economy leaders from Foxway Group, ERI and HP, we explored the evolving role of IT asset disposition (ITAD) and opportunities in the circular electronics economy.

The event’s focus on advancing circular economy goals and reducing environmental impact delivered a series of insights and learnings. From this assembly of international expertise across 75+ countries, here are some points from the presentations that stood out for me:

1. Environmental impact of the digital economy

Digitalisation has a heavy material footprint in the production phase, and lifecycle thinking needs to guide every product decision. Consider that 81% of the energy a laptop uses in its lifetime is consumed during manufacture (1 tonne in manufacture is equal to 10,000 tonnes of CO2) and laptops are typically refreshed or replaced by companies every 3–4 years.

From 2018 to 2023, the average number of devices and connections per capita in the world increased by 50% (2.4 to 3.6). In North America (8.2 to 13.4) and Western Europe (5.6 to 9.4), this almost doubled. In 1960, only 10 periodic table elements were used to make phones. In 1990, 27 elements were used and now over 60 elements are used to build the smartphones that we have become so reliant on.

A key challenge is that low-carbon and digital technologies largely compete for the same minerals. Material resource extraction could increase 60% between 2020 and 2060, while demand for lithium, cobalt and graphite is expected to rise by 500% until 2050.

High growth in ICT demand and Internet requires more attention to the environmental footprint of the digital economy. Energy consumption of data centres is expected to more than double by 2026. The electronics industry accounts for over 4% of global GHG — and digitalisation-related waste is growing, with skewed impacts on developing countries.

E-waste is rising five times faster than recycling — 1 tonne of e-waste has a carbon footprint of 2 tonnes. Today’s solution? ‘Bury it or burn it.’ In terms of spent emissions, waste and the costs associated with end-of-life liabilities, PCBAs (printed circuit board assembly) cost us enormously — they generally achieve 3–5% recyclability (75% of CO2 in PCBAs is from components).

2. Regulating circularity in electronics

There is good momentum across jurisdictions in right-to-repair, design and labelling regulations; recycling targets; and voluntary frameworks on circularity and eco-design.

The EU is at the forefront. EU legislation is lifting the ICT aftermarket, providing new opportunities for IT asset disposition (ITAD) businesses. To get a sense, the global market for electronics recycling is estimated to grow from $37 billion to $108 billion (2022–2030). The value of refurbished electronics is estimated to increase from $85.9 billion to $262.2 billion (2022–2032). Strikingly, 40% of companies do not have a formal ITAD strategy in place.

Significantly, the EU is rethinking its Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) management targets, aligned with upcoming circularity and WEEE legislation, as part of efforts to foster the circular economy. A more robust and realistic circularity-driven approach to setting collection targets would better reflect various factors including long lifespans of electronic products and market fluctuations.

Australia and New Zealand lag the EU’s comprehensive e-waste mandated frameworks. The lack of a systematic approach results in environmental degradation and missed positioning opportunities for businesses in the circular economy. While Australia’s Senate inquiry into waste reduction and recycling recommended legislating a full circular economy framework — including for imported and local product design, financial incentives and regulatory enforcement, New Zealand remains the only OECD country without a national scheme to manage e-waste.

3. Extending product lifecycles

Along with data security and digital tools, reuse was a key theme in the ITAD & Circular Electronics track of the conference. The sustainable tech company that I lead, Greenbox, recognises that reuse is the simplest circular strategy. Devices that are still functional undergo refurbishment and are reintroduced into the market, reducing new production need and conserving valuable resources.

Conference presenters highlighted how repair over replacement is being legislated as a right in jurisdictions around the world. Resources are saved, costs are lowered, product life is extended, and people and organisations are empowered to support a greener future. It was pointed out that just 43% of countries have recycling policies, 17% of global waste is formally recycled, and less than 1% of global e-waste is formally repaired and reused.

Right to repair is a rising wave in the circular economy, and legislation is one way that civil society is pushing back on programmed obsolescence. Its global momentum continues at different speeds for different product categories — from the recent EU mandates to multiple US state bills (and some laws) through to repair and reuse steps in India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Commission has done a scoping study to identify product groups under the Ecodesign framework that would be most relevant for implementing an EU-wide product reparability scoring system.

Attending this event with the entire electronic waste recycling supply chain — from peers and partners to suppliers and customers — underscored the importance of sharing best practices to address the environmental challenges that increased hardware proliferation and complex related issues are having on the world.

Ross Thompson is Group CEO of sustainability, data management and technology asset lifecycle management market leader Greenbox. With facilities in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, Greenbox Group provides customers all over the world a carbon-neutral supply chain for IT equipment to reduce their carbon footprint by actively managing their environmental, social and governance obligations.

Image credit: iStock.com/Mustafa Ovec

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