It was unimaginable that just a few decades ago people will be talking about eco-friendly production and responsible use of paper. Today, particularly in an office environment, we often get to see that there is such a willingness to minimise paper usage in order to save money and reduce its environmental impacts. While this kind of approach has become widely accepted as good practice, yet there are doubts and confusion still exit with regard to origin, usage and disposal of papers.
Recent trends of ‘going paperless’ are largely exit as a concept but in reality it is virtually impossible to eliminate all hard copies of papers from our offices, academic institutions or even from homes. We need to use paper for various purposes - from printing balance sheet items in the offices to hand-written exam papers in the academic institutions or to a simple shopping list. Not to forget about wrapping papers for birthdays or Christmas presents. Papers are essential items that we all need to use occasionally.
Over the past many years, the most controversial issue has been logging of old grown forests to get woods for paper production. In order to avoid status quo, the creation of mono-culture purpose built plantation forests also raised serious concerns about the local ecological imbalances. Not only the deforestation issues in the developed and developing countries, but also air and water pollution, using non-renewable resources (e.g. energy produced from fossil fuels), treatment of waste, wood pulping processes and recycling of papers have been some of the major issues.
In light of this, the very fundamental questions ought to come in our minds - why are we destroying forests to make papers? Are paper manufacturers promoting eco-friendly and sustainable papers? Are we committed to responsible use of papers in our offices and homes? Why should we use recycled papers? Electronic communications may be more environmentally friendly than using virgin papers? And, many more!
There are many myths surrounding environmental issues related to paper. They are often referred to [common] misconceptions and people still believe these false impressions without realising the green improvement that occurred within the pulp and paper industries for the past many years. We cannot conclude (will still remain inconclusive and debatable in my view) whether paper is sustainable or not without discussing a few biggest myths and realities surrounding paper including – ‘paper industries destroy forests’, ‘making paper uses a lot or energy and water’, ‘making paper is bad for environment and climate’, ‘paper industry is out-dated’, ‘paper industry wants to make more paper as it is their bread and butter’, ‘recycled papers should only be used' etc.
Let’s explore briefly just a few of these facts and realities. Tropical deforestation is not happening due to paper industries greed for profits, rather increased demand in use for croplands and pastures from the locals, which is directly or indirectly connected to the effects of economic globalisation. There are many other reasons why tropical forests are declining; however it’s not the scope of this discussion. If we look at particularly in continental Europe, the forests have grown by over 30% since 1950, and are increasing by 1.5 million football pitches every year - an area four times the size of London (Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI) forest factsheet, July 2008). As well, 94% of the paper we use is made in Europe (CEPI trade statistics, 2007 in Two Sides 2012). So, it’s a fact that European paper manufacturers are not using trees that are grown in other parts of the world, rather using home-grown raw materials. For other continents particularly in Asia, Africa and South America, it’s difficult to illustrate data comparability as similar statistics do not exist in many cases. Therefore, we can hardly draw any conclusion if the practice is sustainable in those continents/countries.
Pulp and paper industries use lot of waste materials (e.g. biomass materials such as wood chips & pulp waste) to create their own electricity. We may think that industry as a whole is using a lot of energy but on average it takes 500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity to produce 200kg of paper, the average amount of paper that each of us consume each year. 500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity is equal to burn a 60W light bulb continuously for one year or powering one computer for 5 months (International Paper, 2010). Whatever justifications there might be for using minimum energy or the biomass energy compared to other business sectors, I still dispute that unless energy sources are from 100% renewable, we cannot say that the pulp and paper industries have achieved their goals to accomplish complete environmental sustainability.
Similar logic applies in relation to water consumption. Despite water consumption for paper making in Europe has fallen by 1/3 since 1970 as a result of more efficient machineries (advance in paper making technologies hence paper industry is not outdated and inefficient), but still large amount of water is being used. This is one of the areas where pulp and paper industries will have to remain consistent in reducing further water consumption and water will be always needed for the paper manufacturing processes. In reality there is nothing call ‘water-less paper production’ and the difficulty with water is that it cannot be replaced by other alternatives.
Unlike other non-renewables (e.g. coal, petroleum, natural gas or radioactive super fuels such as uranium, plutonium, and thorium), paper is considered as renewable resource. Trees take water and carbon-di-oxides for photosynthesis processes (energy and carbon fixing reactions) and as a result release oxygen as by-products. Carbon is stored even when the trees are chopped down and sent for paper making. Trees can be replanted and re-grown therefore replenished over time – a cycle that can endlessly go on.
Paper acts as a carbon sink, holding carbon until they are naturally degraded. According to Ann Ingerson, a resource economist at the Wilderness Society tells ‘paper is not a good option for storing carbon because it degrades too quickly,’ Ingerson says ‘newsprint tends to last for a while in landfills, but office paper breaks down pretty quickly. In landfills it's broken down as methane, which is an even more potent greenhouse gas’ (Chen in Mother Jones, April 09, 2012). It seems paradoxical if we chop more trees to make paper and send it to landfills; effectively we are creating more greenhouse gases. In essence, we see again that like most other environmental problems, the effects of paper on environment are complex, somewhat minimal in terms of its proportional environmental impact ranking but not free from any air emissions.
In my view, the notion of ‘paper industry wants to make more paper as it is their bread and butter’ is not correct. Production of more paper over environmental impacts can be quite a conundrum for the pulp and paper industries. In order to protect their own existence, the pulp and paper industries will have to remain consistence in reducing their environmental impacts and concentrate more on sustainable forest management, which ultimately will provide secured supply of raw materials, or else pulp and paper industries will soon find themselves out of business. A parallel example can be drawn with many other goods and services presently exist in our society that depend on natural resources including water, fisheries, oil, natural gas and agriculture sector etc.
It is essential to choose the least bad option. Arguably, electronic communications may be more environmentally friendly than using virgin papers, but again, the same argument can be drawn whether the energy sources are from 100% renewables. With a reading time of 30 minutes per day the environmental impact of a web based newspaper is, in general, in the same range as a printed newspaper’s environmental impact (Moberg A, et al, 2007 in Two Sides 2012). It’s not possible to come with a clean slate with no negative environmental impacts in both cases. We will shift the problems if we choose only one option over the other without making the chosen one complete clean. It’s well and good if we can make that happen, until then we need to carry on closing the sustainability gaps as much as possible within our limits. Looking closely at the evidences, pulp and paper industries have surprisingly done very well in order to minimise sustainability gaps.
