'Sawdust shock' hits farmers, manufacturers, others

With fewer houses being built and fewer trees being cut, there's less sawdust to go around, and its price has hit $100 a ton in some markets, from a going rate of $25 a ton. That's bad news for farmers, particle-board manufacturers and even the makers of auto parts, but good news for some folks, reports The Wall Street Journal.

"Sawdust may seem like a lowly commodity, but it is widely used in today's economy," Joel Millman writes. "Farms use sawdust and wood shavings as cozy and clean bedding for horses and chickens. Particle-board makers devour it by the boxcar to fashion a cheap building material. Auto-parts manufacturers blend a finely pulverized sawdust called 'wood flour' with plastic polymers to make a lightweight material to cover steering wheels and dashboards. . . . Wineries use oak sawdust as a flavoring agent for some wines. . . . Oil-rig operators in Wyoming and Colorado pour sawdust into the caverns they find deep inside rock formations as they hunt for pools of petroleum. Sawdust gives drill bits something to grind through."

Some farmers are "using processed cow manure as bedding instead of wood shavings," Millman reports. "Many dairy farms have a process to convert cattle waste into methane gas that they sell to electric generators. The byproduct is basically the hay the cows ate. Lee Jensen's Five Star Dairy in Elk Mound, Wis., uses an aerobic digester to render manure into stall bedding, and has so much on hand after the process that he's selling the excess to neighbors."

Also affected are homeowners with special stoves that burn sawdust pellets. "The pellets, made of blended bits of cedar, lodgepole pine and Douglas fir, require dry fiber, without impurities. Tree bark won't do, only sawdust," Millman writes. Ernie Johnson, left, of Johnson Brothers Contracting in Missoula, Mont., "now mines old houses that are being torn down for lumber that he can grind up and sell." (Photo by Joel Millman)

One upside of "sawdust shock" is more money for scavengers. "Boy Scout troops in Oregon fattened their coffers in January collecting discarded Christmas trees," Millman reports. "Troop 618 in Beaverton made $3,000 hauling trees to a lumber recycler. Troop 728 made $10,000." (Read more; subscription may be required)