By the Time We Got to Woodstalk: Materials Monthly
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.12.06
We are like a kid getting a present when our Materials Monthly arrives. The last few have been interesting but not particularly Treehugger. This month, Jennifer Siegel makes up for it in spades. All have been alluded to or covered in these pages before but could use a reminder.
Medite looks,feels and works like MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) , but is made from 100% post-industrial recycled wood fibre combined with wax and resin and absolutely no formaldehyde binders and no outgassing. Not the most exciting material in the world, but MDF is the workhorse of the millwork industry and it is great to be able to source a recycled formaldehyde free one. Justin mentioned it in a post on bamboo beds. ::Medite
We have written of Kirei, the elegant Japanese Sorghum based board, here and here. ::Kireiusa
We are suprised that we have not written about Woodstalk before, given that we have had a coaster made from it on our desk for about a year. Chaff and stalk from Manitoba's wheat fields, which was formerly burned, is dried, chopped, and bound with a formaldehyde-free polyurethane bonding agent to make panesl that can be used as a lighter, better performing, sustainable substitute for particleboard and MDF. John Laumer mentioned it here in a post about Columbia Forest Products.
Unfortunately, when we get to the Woodstalk site, we find it has been discontinued. "While Dow BioProducts refined the manufacturing process and improved the quality of the product over the past five years, the demand in the marketplace for a high-quality, low VOC fiberboard product was not at a level high enough to generate the returns necessary to sustain the business. This, coupled with higher operating costs due to increased natural gas and oil prices and overall costs of doing business, made it ever more difficult to justify continued operation of the business and the plant." (::Dow Bioproducts) We thought this a wonderful product and looked forward to using it. Architects and designers out there, if we don't demand low VOC sustainable products, nobody is going to make them. ::Materials Monthly
The woodstalk looks pretty enough. I avoid MDF because (a) I'm a tad allergic to the formaldehyde, and (b) it sucks as a building material because it has poor structural integrity. If you can use it as a coaster, then it'll definatly handle humid environments. But how does it handle a common wood screw?
The Woodstalk was an amazing Product from what i heard. I did some work at the Plant where they made the Woodstalk boards, or strawboard what the workers called it. It is a magnificent machine and a lot of work to make this stuff it is amazing, i wish i could see the machine run. But it is now going to be taken apart and being moved. So i do belive this product might be back on the market, unless they use the press for something else.
I read the press is being exported to make conventional wood board in South America. Locals in Winnipeg feel that Dow never supported the groups who were trying to get the plant up and running again with the straw-based product. A real shame and a needless waste, but of course Dow Chemical has a sorry history on environmental matters, IMO.