Posted on 28-5-2004
The Paper Chase
The paperless office is still a distant dream. In the interim,
we should be recycling more and developing alternatives to wood-based
paper.
By Jim Motavalli
While many futurists predicted that we’d be enjoying
the paperless office around this time, Americans are still at
the epicenter of a paper blizzard. Were you under the impression
that the electronic age would free us from all that? According
to The Myth of the Paperless Office, a company’s use of
e-mail causes an average 40 percent increase in paper consumption.
The demand for ream after ream of white paper is putting a huge
strain not only on America’s forests, but the world’s.
And it’s forcing the environmental movement to consider
the alternatives.
© CORBIS
The U.S. currently gobbles up some 200 million tons of wood
products annually, with consumption increasing by four percent
every year. The pulp and paper industry is the biggest culprit.
U.S. paper producers alone consume one billion trees—or
12,430 square miles of forests—every year, while producing
735 pounds of paper for every American.
The U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population,
but consumes 30 percent of the world’s paper. Only five
percent of America’s virgin forests remain, while 70 percent
of the fiber consumed by the pulp and paper industry continues
to be generated from virgin wood. While logging controversies
most often center around the Pacific Northwest, most of the
wood pulp used for paper in the U.S. actually comes from southern
forests, currently home to some of the greatest biodiversity
in the continental U.S. (see sidebar).
Worldwide, global consumption of wood products has risen 64
percent since 1961. The industry expects that demand will double
by 2050, keeping pace with population growth. Recycling has
helped, but has not yet made an appreciable difference. “Recycling
has yet to dent the world’s appetite for virgin-fiber
pulp,” says the Worldwatch Institute.
In Indonesia, the pulp and paper industry is destroying rainforest
so quickly that it will run out of wood by 2007, according to
a report by Friends of the Earth. An area the size of Belgium
is wiped out annually. Only 10 percent of the trees cut down
for paper in Indonesia are farmed, although the industry had
supposedly committed to replanting its clear-cuts with fast-growing
acacia trees.
Globally, pulp for paper and other uses is taking an increasing
share of all wood production, from 40 percent in 1998 to nearly
60 percent over the next 50 years. In the same time span, easily
accessible and inexpensive sources of wood are disappearing.
Because of the rapid consumption of virgin forests in places
as far apart as Canada and Southeast Asia, forest restoration
has not been able to keep pace with the demand for wood products.
Toxic Pollution and Waste
Loss of forests isn’t the only issue. Deforestation has
released an estimated 120 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2),
the major global warming gas, into the atmosphere. The pulp
and paper industry is the third-largest industrial polluter
in both Canada and the U.S., releasing more than 220 million
pounds of toxic pollution into the air, ground and water each
year.
Much of that pollution is the byproduct of the three million
tons of chlorine used annually to bleach wood pulp white. Chlorine
bleaching is a major source of the potent carcinogen dioxin,
which is routinely discharged into rivers and streams with wastewater.
As a result, dioxin is now ubiquitous in our environment, found
throughout the world in air, water, soil and food. Every woman
alive today carries some trace of dioxin in her breast milk.
Dioxin is considered one of the most toxic substances ever produced,
and has been known to cause cancer, liver failure, miscarriage,
birth defects and genetic damage in laboratory animals.
The U.S. paper industry has been aware of the dioxin problem
since at least 1985, but has been very slow to act on alternatives
(see sidebar). In Europe, chlorine bleaching is being phased
out. That has only been proposed in the U.S., despite the fact
that the American Public Health Association strongly supports
a phase-out. In Sweden, pulp mills have to meet stringent standards,
and were required to reduce chlorine content by 90 percent as
early as 1993. When they have to, American companies such as
Proctor and Gamble can go virtually chlorine-free: The Pampers
exported to Sweden, for example, are made without a chlorine-bleaching
process, unlike those wrapping U.S. babies.
Paper is also the dominant material in solid waste. And in
the United States, paper-producing companies are the third-largest
energy consumer, with a pace that keeps quickening.
It’s not surprising that, given all these environmental
negatives, the paper industry would wrap itself in a green mantle.
International Paper, for instance, issued a Sustainability Report
in 2002 that cites its role as “among the largest owners
of sustainably managed private forestland in the world.”
Its raw material is trees, the report says, “the world’s
greatest renewable resource.” It participates in forest
certification programs and voluntary partnerships and strictly
adheres to environmental regulations. And according to the American
Forest and Paper Association, U.S. papermakers recycle enough
paper every day to fill a 15-mile-long train of boxcars. Since
1990, the recovered paper would fill 200 football stadiums to
a height of 100 feet.
While some of this is undoubtedly greenwashing, Michael Klein,
a spokesperson for the American Forest and Paper Association,
asserts that the industry is currently using all the recycled
paper it can get. “I have a problem with activists who
say we have to demand more recycled content,” Klein says.
“Instead, they should demand that people recycle more.
One hundred percent of the paper and boxed fiberboard people
put on the curb is used.” Paper activists point out, however,
that a significant amount of U.S.-generated recyclable paper
is actually exported. Nearly a quarter of the recovered paper
in the U.S. is shipped to Mexico, Canada, Asia and Europe rather
than being recycled here, reports Conservatree.
Tree-Free Paper: Great Expectations
There is vast potential for a “green” paper industry,
including recycled and natural fibers, that could not only spare
trees but also produce paper with minimal environmental impact
overall, but it needs an infusion of both public interest and
research funding. It is presently, at best, a $20 million sales
niche in a $230 billion U.S. industry, asserts the San Francisco-based
Fiber Futures, which lobbies for expanded use of agricultural
residues and other tree-free materials for paper. A plan by
the Natural Resources Defense Council to open a paper recycling
plant in the Bronx, New York ended tragically because of labor
opposition and last-minute political maneuvering, which thwarted
financing. Many small and medium-sized paper mills that handled
tree-free papers have closed because of industry consolidation
and the economic downturn, sending many paper manufacturers
overseas for sources of pulp.
But despite these market setbacks, research continues to offer
strong evidence that non-wood fibers can be used for large-scale
paper production in North America. And tiny demonstration projects
have been very successful, while full-scale mills are moving
forward overseas. According to Fiber Futures, a dedicated wheat
straw pulp mill is being built in Turkmenistan.
Progress is arriving incrementally. In Canada, the so-called
Markets Initiative, with support from several major nonprofit
groups and linked to the U.S.-based Green Press Initiative,
has persuaded 67 Canadian book publishers to buy their paper
from forest-friendly sources. The Harry Potter books printed
in Canada are among the converts.
Meanwhile, paper activists are mobilizing. In late 2002, 75
members of more than 50 environmental groups from around the
world gathered together to promote what they called “an
environmentally and socially sustainable paper production system.”
The Environmental Paper Summit promotes collaborations on the
use of environmentally friendly papers, and is planning outreach
to progressive paper purchasers (including social justice groups
and labor unions), producers and suppliers—all in an effort
to change paper consumption habits.
The Environmental Paper Summit’s steering committee included
Conservatree, the Center for a New American Dream, Co-op America,
Dogwood Alliance, Environmental Defense, Forest Ethics, the
Green Press Initiative, Markets Initiative, Natural Resources
Defense Council and the Recycled Products Purchasing Cooperative.
The process resulted in a Common Vision document that has already
been signed by more than 80 nonprofit groups and corporations.
“We’re trying to stimulate demand for recycled
paper,” says Susan Kinsella, executive director of Conservatree.
“Environmental groups needed to express a common mission
so that it would be clear the market will be there. We realized
we’re all in it together, and the process created tremendous
camaraderie.” A new push is desperately needed, because
consumers have become complacent, and big potential purchasers
have become worried about steady sources of recycled paper.
Recycled fiber content slid from a high of 10 percent in the
early 1990s to a current rate of less than five percent.
The Common Vision endorses kenaf and hemp production “if
life-cycle analysis and other comprehensive and credible analyses
indicate that they are environmentally and socially preferable
to other sources of virgin fiber.” Kinsella says recycled
paper “needs to be the bottom line,” but she also
sees a need to increase non-wood production.
This view is common in the environmental community. Evan Paul,
a Forest Ethics paper campaigner, says, “While it’s
better to be growing kenaf instead of logging, we want to really
look at the whole life cycle of natural fibers. We’re
not sure of the full impact when it includes clearing land and
using pesticides.” Paul is, however, bullish on the use
of existing agricultural waste in papermaking, including corn
and rice husks. “But,” he adds, “There hasn’t
been a lot of development in that field, either.”
One such tree-free waste paper is made from 100 percent bagasse
fiber, left over from sugar cane production. According to Reprograph’s
Erik Sanudo, the new Propal paper line was launched in 2003
and hopes to find uses in stores and offices for notepads and
cash register rolls. Kimberly-Clark also uses bagasse in paper
towels and tissues.
The Common Vision also calls for “responsible fiber sourcing”
that cuts down on virgin wood fiber use, ends the use of wood
products from endangered forests, and asks for a moratorium
on turning natural ecosystems into monocrop wood plantations
(see sidebar).
All of this activity strikes many in the paper industry as
beside the point. “We think finding a replacement for
wood fiber is a problem that does not need to be solved,”
John Mechem of the Washington-based American Forest and Paper
Association told Well Journal. “Our group is not necessarily
opposed to kenaf. In fact, some of our members have tried—and
may still be trying—to make it work.”
Reviving a Movement
The new movement could spur a process that has slowed after
some promising developments. In 1996, widespread protests against
logging operations—and memories of the severe 1994 price
hike for pulp—prompted some publishers to investigate
alternatives to tree-based paper. With the cooperation of seven
newspapers, Al Wong of Arbokem developed a test newsprint that
was 68 percent de-inked old newspapers, 12 percent thermo-mechanical
wood pulp (which is crushed with grinders using steam at high
pressures and temperatures), 11 percent ryegrass straw pulp,
six percent rice straw pulp and three percent red fescue straw
pulp. Some 200 tons of this mixed-origin newsprint were produced
and test-printed at the such newspapers as the Los Angeles Times,
the San Jose Mercury-News and the Sacramento Bee.
The experiment was successful. Sue Dorchak, quality-assurance
manager at the Mercury-News, says her company had evaluated
the agri-fiber’s strength, appearance, runability and
ability to take ink, and found only a tiny difference. She said
the newspaper was both “enthused and optimistic,”
but the experiment was not repeated (despite projections that
the agri-pulp for newsprint would actually be cheaper than wood
pulp product at a certain scale).
Both hemp and kenaf offer excellent possibilities for use as
a virgin fiber replacement in newsprint, which tends to carry
a high recycled content. Kenaf was first used in a print run
by the Peoria Journal Star in 1977, after the federal Agricultural
Research Service (ARS), based in Peoria, laid the groundwork
through technological feasibility studies. ARS proclaimed kenaf
to be its top alternative fiber candidate for pulp and papermaking.
The American Newspaper Publishers Association became interested
in kenaf and produced a feasibility study in 1981. A joint venture
company, Kenaf International, was also formed at that time.
Unfortunately, once the efficacy of kenaf for newsprint was
demonstrated in Illinois, ARS effectively moved on to other
projects. Picking up the ball was the Kenaf Demonstration Project,
which created some well-traveled kenaf for test purposes: It
was grown in Texas (through the support of then-Congressman
Kika de la Garza), pulped in Ohio, made into newsprint in Quebec
and shipped to California, Texas and Florida for printing. Hard
work by a number of dedicated advocates kept the dream of kenaf
paper alive until the groundbreaking 1996 newspaper experiment.
It’s uncertain if the newspaper experiments will continue.
Partly because newsprint (which does not face critical strength
and brightness issues) already contains more than 50 percent
recycled content, Arbokem and other companies now focus on other
paper markets, particularly those (including writing paper and
bright white boxboard) that currently uses high amounts of virgin
fiber.
The advantages of alternative fiber paper are many. “Under
favorable conditions, kenaf can be several times more productive
than trees on a per-acre basis,” says fibers expert E.L.
Whitely. “Kenaf dry material could be produced at about
half the cost per unit of producing pulpwood.” Kenaf paper
can also be produced without chlorine bleaching, advocates say.
A Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI)
study called “A Search for New Fiber Crops” demonstrated
that alternative fibers require less energy and chemical use
in processing than standard wood sources. According to the “Using
Less Wood” fact sheet, energy use can be cut by 30 percent
in the mechanical pulp and refining process with alternative
fibers.
The environmental website Ecomall reports that one acre of
hemp can produce as much usable fiber as four acres of trees.
It adds that hemp paper is longer lasting than wood pulp, stronger,
and both acid- and chlorine-free. Hemp advocates point out that
hemp-based paper can be recycled seven times, versus only four
for wood pulp.
There is the potential for large-scale commercialization of
tree-free paper, but there remain a number of obstacles, many
of them agricultural. As Daniel Kugler’s report “Non-Wood
Fiber Crops” demonstrates, a major barrier is the lack
of processing plants and commercial-scale agricultural equipment.
Many of the test plots have been harvested using equipment borrowed
from other industries, including sugar cane and cotton. But
kenaf harvesters have been built and tested. These problems
would be easily overcome if the industry were focused on them.
Converting the paper pulping industry to tree-free raw material
would be a Herculean effort. Worldwide, just 10 percent of all
paper pulp comes from non-wood sources; in the U.S. the figure
is less than a paltry one percent. In part because the paper
industry has an enormous investment in wood as a raw material,
there is little momentum today.
Jeanne Trombly, founder of Fiber Futures, says that, despite
the huge amount of agricultural waste produced here, there are
currently no commercial non-wood pulp mills in the United States.
With the exception of one small plant that pulps U.S. currencies
for remanufacture as paper, all non-wood pulp is imported. Industrial
hemp is illegal to grow in the U.S. (but legal in Canada). It
is in such heavy demand from small manufacturers that a thriving
industry exists to, for example, grow it in Hungary and process
it in Italy.
“The paper industry in the United States is at a crossroads,”
Trombly says. “The traditional companies are floundering
and contracting, but there’s still not much enthusiasm
for applying research and development money to innovative non-woods.
It’s a stubborn allegiance to the wood-based models that
have brought the industry to where it is today.” Trombly
points out that the strong fiber produced by hemp and kenaf
blends well with the weaker post-consumer recycled paper.
At a recent University of Washington conference on the future
of the paper industry, two of four student presentations focused
on pulping wheat straw. “It was wonderful to see,”
Trombly says, “but the paper and pulp executives in attendance
were very discouraging, claiming that the technology is too
expensive, or that while it may work technically, it ‘just
doesn’t work for us.’”
Al Wong, a Vancouver, Canada-based pioneer who markets his
own uncoated “Downtown Paper #3” for the California
market, has learned the hard way that the paper business is
not immediately receptive to new ideas. But Wong’s story
is one of inspiring perseverance. In 1993, Wong’s company,
Arbokem, designed and built a demonstration-size pulp mill in
Alberta, Canada that used wheat straw, an agricultural waste
that would otherwise be burned, as its basic “feedstock.”
With the addition of longer-fiber pulp from other sources, wheat
straw is an effective base for newsprint.
The mill’s first pulp was produced in 1994, but the operation
encountered both technical problems and sales resistance on
the part of potential buyers. The mill tried out a variety of
agricultural residues, including California rice straw, Oregon
ryegrass, Washington State bluegrass, and flax straw from Manitoba.
In 1999, the mill made a permanent change to exclusive use of
organically grown cereal straw.
Agricultural waste remains an enormously promising resource
for papermaking. Meanwhile, both hemp and kenaf offer a sound
alternative to virgin fiber, leaving the world’s fast-disappearing
forests intact.
|