Clean Wood Feedstock — Class 146, CIRCIL $5/tonne
Clean Wood Feedstock
The whole Digital Refinery economics revolve around one classification: Clean (Class 146). At $5/tonne CIRCIL Levy vs $60/tonne for mixed, clean wood is the $55/tonne difference between profit and penalty.
What Counts as Clean
✅ Dimensional Lumber
2x4, 2x6, 2x8 framing — untreated, unpainted, pre-consumer offcuts from active builds.
✅ Pallets & Crating
Heat-treated (HT) pallets, crating, dunnage — no chemical treatment, no MB fumigation residue.
✅ Plywood & OSB (untreated)
Phenolic-resin panels from formwork, sheathing offcuts — no paint, no laminate, no melamine.
✅ Engineered I-Joist
LVL, OSB-web I-joists, glulam offcuts when untreated and unpainted.
✅ Clean Demolition
Framing from recent residential builds where CCA / creosote / paint can be confidently excluded on a visual + audio override check.
✅ Furniture-Grade Offcuts
Raw hardwood cutoffs, shop scrap — no stain, no varnish, no glued composite.
What Doesn't Count (Needs a Different Stream)
❌ CCA / Pressure-Treated
Arsenic-copper-chromium. The Visual Fallacy: weathered CCA looks identical to clean gray pine. Audio override: if anyone says "deck" or "treated," the classification shatters.
❌ Painted / Stained
Lead paint risk (pre-1978 residential). Modern paints still contain biocides and binders that fail TCLP.
❌ Creosote / Railway Ties
PAH carcinogen profile. Auto-reject.
❌ Laminate / Melamine / MDF
Formaldehyde binders, contaminated resins. Separate RPRA manifest required.
The Economics
Mothership load economics — clean wood vs mixed waste:
Clean: 19.15 tonnes × $5/tonne = $95.77 CIRCIL Levy
Mixed: 19.15 tonnes × $60/tonne = $1,149.00 CIRCIL Levy
Per-load delta: $1,053 savings. Times 200 loads/week fleet-wide = $210,600 / week in avoided levy.
Compliance Gate in Practice
At intake, the operator points the Pixel 10 Pro camera at the load. Gemma 4 E2B (2.3B parameters) runs on-device in under 500ms. If confidence drops below 85%, the E4B (4.5B) Visual Fallacy guard is triggered — dual-model consensus. Hub XRF/NIR at the receiving facility provides the deterministic verdict. TCLP auto-reject: Arsenic > 2.5 mg/L, Lead > 5.0, Chromium > 5.0. Default-reject on ambiguity, always.