Progressive Democrat Issue 118: ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS: Recycled Paper Revisited

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a decline in the market for recycled paper, a problem given the need for BETTER not worse evironmental consumer trends.

I got some interesting comments on this article. First came some people justifying virgin paper over recycled. Now I do not agree with the full thrust of their arguements. It is clear than under MOST circumstances, buying recycled paper products is more environmentally sound than buying virgin paper products. But, they brought up some good points. Here is one person's comment:

For many of our forests, particularly here in the Northeast, private owneship by industrial landowners had protected them from development. And a market for forest products -- with paper as an important leg of that market -- maintains the working forest. Essentially all of the forests in northern ME and NH excepting a few thousand acres of land fall into this class.

Paper is typically made from trash wood that doesn't have a higher value as housing stock, fine-furniture or veneer. Particularly in Maine, the paper market is part of the economic foundation that has kept the Maine Woods open and avialable for recreation, since most recreation happens on private, not public land. Right now, landowners face ever-growing costs from having an open lands policy. As guests, we're not very good at low-impact recreation.

Practically all of Maine's industrial landowners use sustainable forestry practices now; it's the small landowners who have been slow to FISC practices and have those practices certified.

So when you're next copy of National Geographic arrives, the next volume of Harry Potter delights you, remember that it's likely a forest product from the Maine Woods.

And even the concept of Virgin paper is a misnomer, for virtually all paper has some recycled fiber from the paper-making process itself.

The bigger issue is paper made from virgin fiber imported from China where labor issues and air and water-quality issues.

I admit I am skeptical of much of this. But it does bring up the point that not all "virgin" paper and wood products are equally good or bad. Some companies are better and worse than others.

In this context I want to bring up a general point regarding the origin of wood-based products. There is a certification process for wood that is harvested sustainably. However, you have to be careful because the WORST companies came up with a rival, completely bullshit certification process. You should only, ONLY buy wood-based products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and urge your local hardware stores to only stock wood products approved by the FSC. This is the most stringent certification, monitoring every step of the process. This certification process also has been found NOT to add to the cost of the product for the consumer. NO OTHER CERTIFICATION PROCESS MEANS SQUAT. There are many lovely sounding certifications thought up by the lumber industry and NONE of them mean much. (For more on this, please read Jared Diamond's book Collapse, pp. 468-479). But this mostly deals with actual wood products, not so much paper. As far as I am aware, there is no reliable way to tell if the paper you buy has been harvested by sustainable means or not UNLESS you purchase 100% recycled or non-tree paper. So, unless the industry has a RELIABLE certification process similar to that of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for lumber products, I maintain that your safest bet is buying recycled. If someone claims there is such a certification process I will need some solid proof (with good references to environmental agencies that approve) before I would trust it. The lumber industry has been so dishonest with their versions of certification that I will be skeptical of most of what they say unless there is independent, trustworthy, environmentally conscious confirmation.

Another interesting point regarding "virgin" paper has to do with energy generation. In the production of "virgin" paper products, some of the waste is used to generate energy for the production process, making the entire process less environmentally damaging. Here is another comment I received:

Making pulp, the process of digesting wood to separate the fiber from the lignons -- is actualy used to generate energy. The lignons (the glues that hold the cellulose in a tree together) are burned and used to generate steam for power.

Turning recycled fiber into pulp for new paper doesn't produce any sort of bio-mass for energy; and would increase the external energy supplies needed to make the same volume of paper.

Paper companies pay very close attention to energy costs from a number of sources, using that information as part of determining what and how they'll produce product.

Again, I feel much of this is all well and good but also something of excuses made by paper companies to do things that aren't as good environmentally but are cheaper for them. So I still feel that encouraging recycling is the best way, and so I maintain that purchasing recycled paper products is an important part of any environmentally conscious household. With this in mind, Co-op America also sent me a comment on my piece on the market for recycled paper. Co-op America is an organization I have worked with for a long, long time. They have lots of resources and do lots of good work. Please check them out.

Co-op America suggests looking over this list of magazines that use recycled paper. If your favorite magazine is on the list, write to thank them for using recycled paper. If your favorite magazine is NOT on the list, please write them to urge them to use recycled paper and consider switching to a magazine that does.

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