recovered wood fiber

Michele—To count a product toward MRc4, the manufacturer must report specific percentages of post- & pre-consumer recycled content for the entire assembly. If they cannot or will not report it this way, you cannot enter a percentage into the MR calculator. You are correct that, by reporting only the recycled/recovered content of the fiber, these manufacturers have ignored the glues & resins that bind the fibers together. Beyond that, the use of both terms “recycled” & “recovered” suggests the use some “internally recovered” fiber, which does not count toward MRc4. (ISO-14021-1999 definition of “pre-consumer material” explicitly excludes “reutilization of materials such as rework, regrind or scrap generated in a process and capable of being reclaimed within the same process that generated it.”) When I have contacted particleboard manufacturers for specific percentages, they have said that they do not track fiber reclaimed within their mills separately from recycled material obtained from outside sources.

Michele - Jon has provided you solid advice but I wanted to add a couple of things from Proven Provider. "Recovered" as a claim for recycled content raises a red flag to the review team. (As Jon notes above recycled and recovered are not synonymous. You'll need manufacturer backup that the material is actually recycled per the LEED definition.) Any claim of 100% recycled for a composite wood product also raises a red flag due to the resin content, which is typically not recycled. As Jon notes, you need details from the manufacturer on the breakdown between resin and wood.