Sustainability in Maine

There’s a chill in the air here in Maine and this year we are pretty excited about it. In another step toward sustainability, Jewett Farms + Co. is the proud owner of a very new, very large machine that takes our waste sawdust and turns it into fuel.

The machine, which we have been dreaming about for years, and ordered almost a year ago is a briquette press. Which as the name implies, creates briquettes made of compressed woodchips and sawdust. The machine is connected to the dust collection system in our cabinet shop. Now, instead of feeding the waste into bags that have to be switched out on a regular basis, the dust is funneled into the briquette press. Sensors in the press register when there is enough material to start making briquettes. Any machine in the cabinet shop that cuts, shapes, or grinds solid wood is connected to the briquette collection system.

The briquette press uses simple compression to create the bricks. Lignin, a naturally occurring polymer in all wood creates the binding needed to keep the briquettes together. The result is a hard-packed fuel brick, that looks like a double-thick hockey puck. The briquettes are dense and extremely dry which results in a clean, even burn.

For us, the purchase of the briquette press is another step in our ongoing process of environmental responsibility. Before this point, we donated our sawdust to local farms, and we gave away our hardwood scraps as kindling. The kindling will remain but the sawdust will become much useful. Over the years we have used sustainability as our guide, choosing to work with only water-based finishes and replacing paper plans with tablets in our cabinet shop to reduce our need for printed materials. Each initiative we take in the growth of our business is done with careful thought to how it impacts our environmental footprint.

For now, we will be giving the briquettes to our employees and friends. The next step is sourcing a wood-burning boiler that will work for a building of our size, at which point we will be able to use our wood waste to heat our cabinet shop, closing the loop.

It’s a pretty fun machine – if you’d like to see it in action contact us for a shop tour!