As an act of amenability to the standard of International Plant Protection Convention in 2002, the guidelines for Regulating Wood Packaging Material in International Trade are now employed. With the use of an eco-friendly heat treatment or methyl bromide (MB) fumigation, wooden materials that are shipped in the country are being processed to get rid of pests.
The Department of Science and Technology’s (DOST’s) Forest Products Research and Development Institute had introduced Furnace Type Heat Treatment Facility to local packaging business. The government agency had approved the use of the said facility because it is inexpensive and not harmful to the environment unlike MB fumigation which is 60 times more unsafe to the layers of the ozone. Researches about MB fumigation showed that: it weakens the ozone by 5 to 10%, wooden materials became indecomposable and human death increases. With the aid of the heat treatment, wooden materials are heated at 56°C in 30 minutes. According to Wency Carmelo, Senior Research Specialist at FPRDI, with the use of 10,000-board foot-capacity FHTF, only P6.68 per pallet will be incurred in an average time of 5 hours. FTLD’s heat treatment is environment friendly facility that will assist packaging business get their IPCC stamps. [via gmanetwork.com]