The words of Greenpeace co-founder Dr Patrick Moore are a good point of departure: “We should be growing more trees and using more wood. If [those] land owners had no market for wood, they would clear the forest away and grow something else they could make money from instead. When you go into a lumber (wood) yard, you are given the impression that by buying wood you are causing the forest to be lost, when in fact what you are doing is sending a signal into the market to plant more trees.”

Given that in South Africa, paper is made from farmed trees, we can easily replace the word ‘wood’ above with paper.

Paper goes beyond common A4 printer paper from which the flawed antidote of “paperless” has emerged.

Paper includes packaging – from the boxes in which computer equipment is protected during shipment to the box that teabags come in; from your morning cereal, to the label on the coffee jar, to the bag of sugar and to the milk carton; from the tissue box to the bag and box that contained your takeaway lunch. It also includes books, magazines and newspapers. And then the important things like toilet paper, facial tissues, paper towel, feminine hygiene and diapers.

I won’t even go into the number of fibre-based, cellulosic innovations that are set to rival fossil-based materials.

Paper saves forests

South African paper products are produced from a renewable resource, in the form of:

• Wood pulp from trees farmed sustainably managed timber plantations (not from the wood of indigenous trees)
• Recycled paper fibre
• Bagasse (byproduct from sugar cane processing)

Just like most industries, paper manufacturing has an impact on the environment, but this is mitigated through the carbon sequestration by plantations, and the release of oxygen; the use of biomass-based renewable energy (derived from by-products of the papermaking process), emission reduction and water recycling initiatives, biodiversity conservation at plantation level as well as the promotion of paper recovery and recycling.

Carbon capture

In papermaking, the timber is chipped, pulped and paper is made and converted into countless products that we connect with all day, every day – in the kitchen and bathroom, at the office, at the supermarket and while travelling.

Through the papermaking process, carbon (from the CO2 absorbed by the trees) remains locked up and out of the atmosphere. And by recycling paper, we keep this carbon locked up. Destined for landfill – a compact, anaerobic environment – paper (mixed with other waste) will degrade and release gases such as methane which is 25 times more potent than CO2.

While there is no doubt that digital technologies offer security, integration, immediacy and convenience, using the mantra of “saving forests” to promote digital means needs to stop. Because it is simply untrue.

The post Using paper saves trees – a South African perspective first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Organisations like the Paper Recycling Association of South Africa (RecyclePaperZA) are working towards a ‘recycling-minded’ society by teaching ordinary people how they can make an extraordinary difference – with everyday items.

“Separating paper and cardboard products from home, school and office waste and keeping it aside for conversion into other products has many benefits, both for the environment and the people who make a living by collecting recyclables and selling them on to buy-back centres and paper manufacturers,” says RecyclePaperZA operations director Ursula Henneberry.

RENEWABLE AND RECYCLABLE

The paper products we come into daily contact with – ranging from office paper and newspapers, medicine boxes and magazines, juice and milk cartons to cardboard cores from toilet rolls – can all be recycled.

They are also completely renewable because, at some point, their fibre would have come from sustainably and responsibly farmed trees that are planted, grown, harvested and replanted in cycles.

Recycling also keeps the carbon originally stored in the wood fibre of trees locked in paper products and out of the atmosphere for longer.

Unfortunately large quantities of paper still end up in landfills, which are rapidly running out of space, and add to greenhouse gas emissions when paper decomposes with other waste.

“During 2014, 64% of recoverable paper was recycled, 2% more than in 2013 and 5% more than in 2012,” says Henneberry. “For every tonne of paper recycled, up to three cubic metres of landfill space is saved – land that could be better used for housing, agriculture and infrastructure. During 2014, South Africans recycled 1.1 million tonnes, enough to fill 1,276 Olympic-sized swimming pools.”

But we need to do more. It is estimated that only 5% of households recycle paper.

RecyclePaperZA advises that householders keep recyclables aside for an informal collector who walks your neighbourhood every week. “This increases the quality of the recyclables, allowing the collector to earn a little more.”

TRASH IS TREASURE

“In a country with high unemployment rates and accompanying poverty, paper recycling is becoming a source of revenue for a growing number of people. An estimated 35,000 people put food on their tables by walking the streets to collect ‘waste’ in return for cash or work for larger companies to recover, sort and weigh recyclables for conversion into usable and commercially viable products.

The pulp and paper manufacturing industry is a key sector in the South African economy. Importantly, it employs a workforce of more than 150,000 people across the value chain – from forestry, to pulp and paper manufacturing to informal collectors. These people in turn collectively feed, clothe and school around 900,000 dependants.

“Companies that produce paper products run major mills specifically designed to turn today’s phonebooks, magazines, notepads, company minutes, milk cartons and cereal boxes into tomorrow’s egg containers, corrugated boxes and board, newspapers and tissue products,” states Henneberry.

“Some 65% of recovered paper is used as fibre, without which these mills would stand idle, unable to manufacture the pulp used to produce materials for products manufactured in South Africa and exported around the world.”

You can get involved by separating all kinds of refuse, starting with paper and moving on to plastics, glass and cans.

Paper products you can recycle:

• all office paper
• coloured paper
• newspaper, magazines (even glossy ones)
• catalogues, phonebooks
• direct marketing leaflets
• cardboard packaging of all kinds, shapes and sizes – boxes used for moving; electronics, shoes, gifts and cereal
• paper towel and toilet paper cores
• food packaging (unwaxed only please)
• shredded paper (in plastic bag to minimize blow-away)
• milk, juice and liquid cartons (should be empty)
• books: all soft cover, hard or plastic covers should be ripped off
• pizza boxes (food and wax paper removed)
• brown paper bags

Remember, paper should be separated from wet waste so it does not get contaminated.

Paper products you shouldn’t recycle

• Tissue paper and paper towel
• Wax paper
• Used cement and dog food bags
• Disposable nappies
• Plastic lined papers
• Foil lined papers

RECYCLING PROGRAMMES

• Visit mywaste.co.za for programmes in your area.
  • Enrol in a free kerbside collection programme.
  • Find a drop-off centre near your home or office, usually at local shopping centres.
• Check with local community centres, places of worship or schools if they have a paper recycling programme from which they benefit financially.
• Contract the services of a small recycling business.

Clean-up SA and Recycle Week takes place between September 14 and 18, and National Recycling Day is celebrated on Friday, September 18. International Coastal Clean-up Day takes place on Saturday, 19 September.

The post Discover the treasure in your trash first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

In the comprehensive study, scientists from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and the University of Washington’s College of the Environment evaluated a range of scenarios, including leaving forests untouched, burning wood for energy, and using various solid wood products for construction.

The researchers calculated that the amount of wood harvested globally each year (3.4 billion cubic meters) is equivalent to only about 20 percent of annual wood growth (17 billion cubic metres), and much of that harvest is burned inefficiently for cooking. They found that increasing the wood harvest to the equivalent of 34% or more of annual wood growth would have profound and positive effects:

• Between 14% and 31% of global CO₂ emissions could be avoided by preventing emissions related to steel and concrete; by storing CO₂ in the cellulose and lignin of wood products; and other factors.
• About 12% to 19% of annual global fossil fuel consumption would be saved including savings achieved because scrap wood and unsellable materials could be burned for energy, replacing fossil fuel consumption.
• Wood-based construction consumes much less energy than concrete or steel construction. Through efficient harvesting and product use, more CO₂ is saved through the avoided emissions, materials, and wood energy than is lost from the harvested forest.

“This study shows still another reason to appreciate forests — and another reason to not let them be permanently cleared for agriculture,” said Chadwick Oliver, the Pinchot Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies, director of the Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry at F&ES and lead author of the new study. “Forest harvest creates a temporary opening that is needed by forest species such as butterflies and some birds and deer before it regrows to large trees. But conversion to agriculture is a permanent loss of all forest biodiversity.”

The manufacture of steel, concrete, and brick accounts for about 16 percent of global fossil fuel consumption. When the transport and assembly of steel, concrete, and brick products is considered, its share of fossil fuel burning is closer to 20% to 30%, Oliver said.

Reductions in fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions from construction will become increasingly critical as demand for new buildings, bridges and other infrastructure is expected to surge worldwide in the coming decades with economic development in Asia, Africa, and South America, according to a previous F&ES study. And innovative construction techniques are now making wood even more effective in bridges and mid-rise apartment buildings.

According to Oliver, carefully managed harvesting also reduces the likelihood of catastrophic wildfires. And maintaining a mix of forest habitats and densities in non-reserved forests — in addition to keeping some global forests in reserves — would help preserve biodiversity in ecosystems worldwide, Oliver said. About 12.5% of the world’s forests are currently located in reserves.

“Forests historically have had a diversity of habitats that different species need,” Oliver said. “This diversity can be maintained by harvesting some of the forest growth. And the harvested wood will save fossil fuel and CO₂ and provide jobs — giving local people more reason to keep the forests.”

• JOURNAL REFERENCE: Chadwick Dearing Oliver, Nedal T. Nassar, Bruce R. Lippke, James B. McCarter. Carbon, Fossil Fuel, and Biodiversity Mitigation With Wood and Forests. Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 2014; 33 (3): 248 DOI: 10.1080/10549811.2013.839386

Source: www.sciencedaily.com

The post Using More Wood for Construction Can Slash Global Reliance on Fossil Fuels first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Day in, day out, we are faced with messages about the harm that paper does to our environment. More often than not, these messages can be found in two places: at the bottom of emails and from service providers informing you of their move from postal to electronic distribution of documents.

Keeping it on screen is not going green
“While the paper industry cannot swim against the digital tide and the convenience of receiving such documents electronically, the electronic distribution of information should not be touted as being more environmentally friendly than print,” says Jane Molony, PAMSA executive director.

In fact, reading a document on screen produces more carbon dioxide (CO2) than printing out the same document.  A printed document can be read over again without further emissions and can also be recycled, according to a 2006 study by Sir Nicholas Stern, head of the Government Economic Service in the United Kingdom.

The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change  tackled the effects of climate change and global warming on the world economy. Stern used his 700-page document to demonstrate how paper and print have a better environmental footprint than electronic communication.

• Printing the Stern Review emits 85g of CO2 (one copy can be read over and over again without further emissions).
• Reading it on a computer for one hour emits 226g of CO2 every time.
• Burning the Stern Review to CD is estimated to emit 300g of CO2 for every copy
• Burning it to DVD is estimated to emit 350g of CO2 for every copy

Further to this, in September last year the New York Times stated, “The [information] industry has long argued that computerising business transactions and everyday tasks like banking and reading library books has the net effect of saving energy and resources.”

Quoting Power, Pollution, and the Internet, the New York Times asserts that the energy consumption of massive data centres is ‘sharply at odds with its image of sleek efficiency and environmental friendliness’.

E-waste is the fastest growing component in the municipal stream
Greenpeace has identified electronic waste as the fastest growing component of the municipal waste steam”[i].

Hans Wegner, chief sustainability officer of the National Geographic Society notes, “We don’t know the environmental impact of saving a document on a server for ten years or more. And we have no idea of the impact of extracting finite resources to make electronic devices that cannot easily be recycled safely and practically.”

But what about all the trees that are killed to make paper?
Few people realise that all paper in South Africa is produced from plantation-grown trees, recycled paper or bagasse (sugar-cane fibre). Some 600 million trees across 762,000 hectares are specifically farmed for use in pulp and paper manufacturing, just as maize was planted for your cereal and wheat for your bread.

“Contrary to popular and often misinformed belief, the fibre used to make paper products is not sourced from the wood of rainforests, indigenous or common garden trees,” notes Molony.

As massive sinks for atmospheric carbon, forests mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by absorbing CO2 and releasing oxygen through the natural process of photosynthesis. South Africa’s timber plantations lock up 900 million tons a year of CO2, which is a massive environmental service and a key means of mitigating climate change[ii].

If it were not for the pulp and paper industry operating world-wide for the last 150 years the CO2 levels in the atmosphere would be 5% higher (about 0.5 degree) than they are at present[iii].

Over 80% of South African plantations are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), ranking it as the highest level of international certification in the world.  FSC’s Chain of Custody tracks certified material through the production process – from the forest to the consumer, including all successive stages of processing, transformation, manufacturing and distribution.

Please consider the environment before NOT printing this
“While PAMSA certainly does not advocate wasteful printing, we ask that paper and printing, and the environment, be treated with respect.”

PAMSA’s Green Office Week Tips

• Buy locally manufactured paper that is FSC-certified. This way you can be assured that the paper is produced from sustainably managed plantations.
• Recycle your paper, keeping it dry and away from other waste and have it collected regularly. Visit www.mywaste.co.za
• Be responsible with your electronic waste. Do your research and find reputable e-waste recycling companies that you know will handle your old computers and printers with the environment in mind.

[i] Greenpeace, The E-waste Problem 2009

[ii] Forestry South Africa, 2011

[iii] Special Report No 07-02, February 2007. The greenhouse gas and carbon profile of the global forest products industry. NCASI (National Council for Air and Stream Improvement) 

The post Don’t let corporate ignorance cause a paper jam first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Sir Nicholas Stern, head of the Government Economic Service in the United Kingdom, released the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change in 2006. This tackled the effects of climate change and global warming on the world economy.

He used the 700-page document to demonstrate how paper and print have a better environmental footprint than electronic communications.

– Printing the Stern Review emits 85g of carbon dioxide (one copy can be read over and over again without further emissions).

– Reading the Stern Review on a computer for one hour emits 226g of carbon dioxide every time.

– Burning the Stern Review to CD is estimated to emit 300g of carbon dioxide for every copy, while burning it to DVD is estimated to produces 350g of carbon dioxide for every copy.

Stern notes that sending 50kb via e-mail causes the same emission as posting a 10g item, with all its fossil fuel consumption in mail delivery etc.

The big difference is that reading an item on a computer emits greenhouse gases at the rate of 3.8g of carbon dioxide per minute. Reading a piece of paper results in no additional emissions.

By all means, opting for electronic billing but do not label as ‘going green’. It is simply about reducing cost (to the service provider) and improving convenience to you as the user.

The post Paper vs digital – Let’s get Stern about the facts first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).