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| Biofibre—including tops of trees, branches, and trees that are too low quality for making paper or lumber—is a possible source of new products from Ontario's forests. For example, bio-oil produced from wood (above right) could become a source for useful chemicals for products ranging from food flavourings to medicines to synthetic rubber tires. |
What is a bioeconomy? It is the part of the economy that is based on renewable resources such as trees, other plants, and farm crops.
One thing Ontario has a lot of is renewable resources...trees, plants, and farm crops.
And while demand for lumber and paper is down, demand for many bioproducts—those made from renewable resources—is up. Some examples of bioproducts:
- wood pellets for woodstoves
- biodiesel fuel
- greener chemicals for use in making everything from tires to carpet to nylon clothing to carseat foam to paints
- pharmaceutical chemicals called taxanes, which come from the Canada yew plant and are used to make cancer drugs
To make these bioproducts, companies need biofibre from the forest. This biofibre includes tops of trees, branches, and trees that are too low quality for making paper or lumber. MNR is responsible for ensuring that companies harvest biofibre in a sustainable manner, one that ensures the ecological integrity of Ontario's forests.
So now you know a bit about Ontario's bioeconomy. But what does the future hold? “We believe that Ontario's bioeconomy has great potential to provide new and in some cases greener products for the people of Ontario," says OFRI science management coordinator Dan Puddister. "But we need to grow this bioeconomy in a sustainable way."
To help those in Ontario's natural resources community see the big picture when it comes to the bioeconomy, Puddister and several other MNR and Canadian Forest Service staff wrote a paper for The Forestry Chronicle entitled Opportunities and Challenges for Ontario’s Forest Bioeconomy,
"In this paper, we showcase Ontario’s approach to managing biofibre, which we're doing within a sustainable forest management system,” Puddister says. “We also wanted to show that we are committed to research, which allows us to advance our understanding of the bioeconomy, and to adaptive management, which means we are continually improving our management practices by incorporating new findings into government policies as soon as they come to light. We also touch on climate change, market forces, and third-party certification."
Several MNR researchers are studying aspects of the bioeconomy, including:
- OFRI's Trevor Jones, who is looking at the ecological effects of harvesting biomass in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence forest
- OFRI's Tom Noland, who is studying chemicals in bio-oil generated from biofibre (listen to recorded OFRI seminar about bio-oil)
- OFRI's Wayne Bell, who is looking at how much biomass Ontario’s different forest types are likely to yield on the NEBIE Plot Network
- Dave Morris of MNR's Centre for Northern Forest Ecosystem Research, who is studying effects of full-tree harvesting in the boreal forest
Want to delve deeper into Ontario's bioeconomy? Read Opportunities and Challenges for Ontario’s Forest Bioeconomy
