Innovation in Funeral Casket Design

Elegantly Designed and Environmentally Friendly

Making Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF)

Medium-density fibreboard (MDF or MDFB) is an engineered wood product formed by breaking down softwood into wood fibres and combining it with wax and resin before forming panels by applying high temperature and pressure. It is a building material similar in application to plywood but made up of sawdust. It is denser than normal particleboard.

MDF derives its name from the various densities of fibreboard. MDF typically has a density of 600-800 kg/m³. Particle board is a low-density fibreboard and has a density of 160-450 kg/m³, while hardboard, also called high-density fibreboard, has a density of 500-1,450 kg/m³. Similar manufacturing processes are used in making all types of fibreboard.  Ref: www.answers.com

MDF causes damage to the environment both in the destruction of native forests for the wood chips used in making MDF and the toxic resins and chemicals used in the manufacturing process. This is particularly relevant to the funeral industry where over 80% of all coffins and caskets are made from MDF.

Clearing Forests For MDF

In Australia the main species for MDF is plantation grown radiata pine.  To harvest the pine, forestry companies must first replace native forests with pine trees. Forestry Tasmania (a major Australian Forestry company) argues that “Almost all forest harvesting in Australia is from sustainable managed forests, in which a new forest is established when the harvest is complete.” OnEarth Australia’s position is that recycled cardboard products do not use any trees, especially old-growth forests that take hundreds of years to establish and cannot be replaced by planting so-called “new forests”.