María Pereira and Rudy Bello
Soon they will be forest engineers, but from now on their creative genius is recognized here and abroad: two students from the Technological Institute of Costa Rica took their project of handbags made of wood scraps to Mexico and they won!
Did you know that almost half of the wood is wasted in sawmills? Something had to be done to use these waste as it is increasingly necessary to recycle and reuse.
Certainly, the use of waste in industrial, services and residential processes is a social need, to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and the environmental impact they produce.
Wood processing includes sawing, debarking and pulping. These processes produce waste or by-products, such as sawdust and small pieces of wood that can be used in different ways to reduce pollution,”
explains professor Gustavo Torres, from the Forest Engineering School of the Costa Rican Technological Institute ( TEC).
Precisely to this end, two of its students presented a project to create bags made from wood waste at the Joven Emprendedor Forestal fair, held in Mexico in May, where they were second.
María Fernanda Pereira and Rudy Bello used teak and melina waste and sought not only to reduce the amount of forest waste but also to generate employment in rural communities.
In sawmills, more than 40% of wood is wasted. It used to be burned or buried. At present this practice has diminished.
In addition to the ingenious handbag project, there are other ways to take advantage of forest residues, such as pulp production, briquette creation, which is a way of compacting forest waste to generate energy in boilers to benefit industries that require biomass energy.
Forest waste used in energy production brings two benefits to the environment, on the one hand, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and, on the other hand, avoiding the release of long-term carbon stocks from sources that cannot be renewed.
The energy produced by recycled wood emits 50 times less gas emissions than coal fuel and 30 times less than the gas used in industrial facilities.
And to think that handbags will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and our carbon footprint on the planet!