Canadian wood waste turned into fast-degrading foam for packaging and building

University of British Columbia scientists have created a method to turn spruce, pine and fir waste from logging and wildfires into a light, soil-degradable foam. The technique relies on heat, mechanical processing and only a few chemical additives, yielding a product that resembles conventional packaging foam but vanishes in months rather than persisting for centuries. DicinFoam, owned largely by the Wet’suwet’en First Nation’s Yinka Dene Economic Development Limited Partnership, operates a pilot facility in Vancouver that currently outputs between 150 and 200 kilograms per day.

The pilot allows customers to evaluate performance while the team refines large-scale production. Future phases envision a 1,000-ton per-year plant in Burns Lake, creating up to 15 local jobs, and eventually a 15,000-ton capacity factory on Vancouver Island, potentially adding 35-60 more positions and offering training to Indigenous students such as William and Shaun Dennis of the Huu-ay-aht First Nation. Domestic production could also reduce Canada’s reliance on imported wood-based materials.