Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the (a) volume and (b) proportion of (i) virgin wood and (ii) waste wood used in the UK in each of the last five years; and what proportion of each were (A) domestically produced and (B) imported.

UK production, imports, exports and apparent consumption are shown in Table 1. Around 80% of wood used in the UK is imported. The volume of waste wood delivered to market is shown in Table 2. Data on the volume and proportion of recycled [waste] wood used over the last 5 years that has been imported is not held. The majority of wood and wood products imported are made from virgin wood.

Table 1. Volume of wood consumed in the UK (millions of cubic meters of Wood Raw Material Equivalent).

Table 2. Deliveries of recycled wood to wood processing and energy markets.

Source: Forestry Statistics 2018 (Forestry Commission, September 2018)

Based on data from: industry surveys, industry associations, UK overseas trade statistics (HM Revenue & Customs) and conversion factors to Wood Raw Material Equivalent (WRME)

Notes:

1. Excludes recovered paper.
2. UK production of roundwood is estimated from deliveries to wood processing industries and others.