Encompass Magazine Article - Volume 5 Number 4, May/June 2001. 

 "Trimming Down on Your Paper Weight"  By Margaret Chandler

  Paper is the fastest-growing segment of the wood products industry.  Care about what that means for forests and want to do more?  Frustrated every time you try to purchase a decent paper?  Read on.

If paper were a recent invention, it might be called "tree-er" rather than paper.  The word "paper" derives from the word "papyrus," not much used these days for paper production.  Those of us who love forests and marvel at trees might pause to reflect every time we wasted a piece of "tree-er"

Consider this:  Every year the world loses about 14 million hectares of natural forest cover — an area larger than Greece.  This doesn’t include an even larger area that is subject to degradation by less obvious threats such as loss of species and air pollution.  The global industry’s insatiable appetite for timber is projected to surpass supply in the next 10 to 20 years.  If we look specifically at Canada, ecologist Dr. David Schindler maintains that Canada’s boreal forest has only about 50 years of life remaining, and in some provinces more than 60 percent of the boreal forest is scheduled for clearcutting. 

One of the primary reasons forests are logged is for the production of paper.  At least 20 percent of all the wood taken is used to make paper.  Canadians consume, on average, about 335 kilograms of paper a year.  It takes roughly nine trees with a diameter of a telephone pole and the height of a four-storey building to make that much paper.  Although the use is ephemeral, the product lingers on.  Paper makes up roughly 40 percent of the municipal solid waste burden in many industrial countries.

As if this were not enough, paper production is a dirty business.  The pulp industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world and according to Reach for Unbleached, a national foundation for working for a sustainable pulp and paper industry, it’s the third most polluting industry in North America.

As grim as all this sounds, and indeed it is, hope springs eternal.  The emergence of an exiting range of tree-free paper products is a tremendous boon.  Thanks to enlightened paper companies, of which there are more and more, dramatic advances in the quality of recycled papers are being made.  Today’s recycled papers easily met the two most common standards for assessing the quality of writing papers — opacity and brightness.  And processes that enable us to reduce or eliminate bleaching are becoming the order of the day, especially in Scandinavian countries.

Nonwood Fibres

There’s nothing trendy about nonwood papers.  A Chinese, Ts’ai Lun, is credited with inventing the first paper about 1900 years ago out of a curious mix of mulberry, hemp fishing nets and rags.  Even in Canada, wood is a relative newcomer.  Until the end of the 19th century, agricultural fibres and rags made up the raw material stream.  The recent resurgence of interest in nonwood papers brings us round full circle to Ts’ai Lun and his ingenious treatment of agricultural crops and waste materials. 

Nonwood or tree-free fibres generally fall into two categories.  First are the fibre crops that are grown intentionally for their fibres.  These include crops such as hemp and bamboo that are ideal for papermaking because they are strong and bond well.  These fibre plants are also championed as being more pest- and weed-resistant.  Of course, intentionally farmed fibre crops run the risk of becoming industrial monocultures with all the resultant environmental impacts.  However, at this stage in their evolution this is not a serious concern.

Second, are the agricultural residues.  These are the "waste" products derived from food crops such as flax and bananas.  The pulp and paper industry already uses some of these to create currency and art papers.  In North America hundreds of millions of tonnes of agricultural residues are burnt, or otherwise disposed of, annually.  This massive burning of agricultural resources releases substantial particulars and emissions and is also a substantial missed opportunity for sustainable resource management and rural economic development. 

Because they grow for only one season, nonwood fibres contain considerably less lignin (the natural glues) than tree fibre.  Lignin binds cellulose together and removing it is one of the reasons the pulping process is so energy and chemical intensive.  Moreover, many of the nonwood fibres are stronger than tree fibre, meaning they can be recycled more times and help strengthen recycled sheets.  Hemp paper, for example, can be recycled seven times, wood pulp paper only three times.

High-Quality Recycleds

As Michael Kalmonovitch, the owner of Earth’s General Store in Edmonton, is quick to point out, if you’re not buying recycled products, you’re not recycling.  As tempting as the non-wood papers are, it’s also important to support the recycling industry.  That’s why many paper experts believe the best papers combine all three elements:  nonwood fibres, post-consumer wood fibres, and a process that’s chlorine free.

Odd as it seems, it is important to qualify what we mean when we say, "recycled" because there are no regulations in place governing the use of this term.  You can find papers that are 50 percent of more virgin fibre labeled recycled.  Make sure you distinguish between preconsumer materials — things like mill scraps and unsold magazines — and postconsumer materials that must have been purchased by someone and then discarded.   The minimum you should accept is 30 percent postconsumer. 

Recycled paper reduces energy consumption up to 70 percent over processing virgin pulp and requires 55 percent less water to process.  For every tonne of paper made form waste paper, we save 17 trees, 26 500 litres of water and 2.5 cubic metres of space in landfills. 

If your paper choice is wood-based, maximize the Forest Stewardship Council certifies content (see Encompass, Feb. 2001 for a detailed discussion of the certification process.)

Alternatives to Chlorine

Some years ago, I was the idealistic owner of a company with the mission of wholesaling the very best in environmental paper products.  I remember trying to negotiate a major deal with a large pipeline company in Calgary.  But when the supportive purchasing manager distributed samples of the cream-coloured 100 percent recycled paper throughout the company, the word came back:  Don’t buy it — it’s not white enough.  Apparently, it’s not only the Aryan Nations who consider white to be superior.  Amazing as it is, we persist in the notion that bleached white is more desirable than off-whites, even though the latter are far easier on the eye.  This illogical stance ignores the true cost of bleaching everything literally to death.  Bleach cannot mask the true colour of filth — the filth of degraded ecosystems, hazardous chemicals and toxic pollution. 

There are three ways to bleach paper:  with chlorine gas, with chlorine derivatives and using hydrogen peroxide (an oxygen-based method).  Choosing either to bleach with hydrogen peroxide or not all is the best solution.  In some countries, chlorine-free paper mills have been operational for many years.  Sweden has a law requiring the elimination of organochlorinde emissions from paper mills by the year 2000.  A similar law takes effect in British Columbia in 2002, although there is some opposition.

Bleaching terminology can be somewhat misleading.  Here are some essential terms:

Elemental chlorine free (ECF)  No chlorine gas, but chlorine derivatives such as chlorine dioxide are used.  A process used in many recycled papers and tissue products.  Reduces some but not all of the harmful compounds in the effluent.

Totally chlorine free (TCF)  No chlorine or chlorine derivatives are used to make the paper, which means the paper must come from virgin fibre (with recycled paper the content of the original paper is unknown).  TCF pulp has close to 25 percent of the European market.

Process Chlorine Free (PCF)  Recycled paper that is processed back into paper using no chlorine or chlorine derivatives.  This can be paper that is not bleached or paper bleached with an oxygen-based system.

According to the Worldwatch Institute paper "Paper Cuts:  Recovering the Paper Landscape" (highly recommended overview of the paper industry) 54 percent of the bleached pulp produced worldwide in 1998 was ECF (compared with 17 percent in 1997).  This has definitely resulted in substantial reductions in toxic discharges.  An average paper mill using standard chlorine bleaching releases about 35 tonnes of organochlorines daily; ECF mills release seven to 10 tonnes.  Remember, however, that TCF mills produce and release none.

Like so many things awaiting our avid purchase, the cheapest paper bears the heaviest cost.  It’s the kind of paradox a satirist might appreciate, but it’s not all that humourous.  The cheapest photocopy paper is 100 percent non-recycled, bleached all to hell and clearcutting a forest somewhere close to you.  The best paper you can get is going to be pricey, but you’ll relish it in ways you never thought possible.  There’s the virtue in doing to the right thing (don’t scorn smugness, it’s an underrated pleasure), the appreciation of yet another gift form nature’s bounty and the joy of a fine high-quality product.  The paper will cost more, but you’ll use it less.  After years of settling for a mediocre product, you’ve committed to a planet with trees.  You respect paper for the valuable commodity it truly is.

Chandler, Margaret.  "Trimming Down Your Paper Weight",
Encompass Magazine, (May/June, 2001), 13-15. With permission from the Pembina Institute.

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