Potential Supplies and Costs of Waste Wood and Paper in Southcentral Alaska

Abstract

During the last three years, the Alaska Center for Appropriate Technology has developed a manufacturing process that would use wood and paper waste to produce a high-quality medium-density fiberboard. The developers of the manufacturing process have determined that a fiberboard plant would require 30,000 to 60,000 tons of wood and paper waste annually to make it feasible. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation asked the Institute of Social and Economic Research to determine if there is a sufficient supply of wood and paper waste available in Southcentral Alaska to make a fiberboard plant practical. This study focuses on identifying available sources of wood and paper waste in the Anchorage area because we found it is the only area in Southcentral Alaska where there are adequate supplies. The costs of obtaining these materials for a manufacturing plant depend on the cost of purchasing, collecting, hauling, and sorting waste from many different sources. These costs also vary for many reasons; and to reflect these variations, we have developed low and high estimates of the cost per ton of obtaining each source of wastes. Section III presents these low and high cost estimates.