Comments Lewis has made

Certified or Recycled - An unnecessary battle

Umbra, I agree with you that it's a very good thing that we can have this discussion at this point in the marketplace.  It says a lot about the consumers and the companies that are making these products available.  

I'm going to comment on a few of the above topics and also make some interesting information available.

1.  Trees will not be "saved" by eliminating print.  In North America, trees are primarily cut down for wood first (highest value).  It would be more accurate to say "Don't build that house - save a tree."  Paper mills are mostly the recipient of saw mill residuals (chips), tree tops that aren't used for dimensional lumber, and forest thinnings.  There are trees cut down for paper, but it's not the 1:1 correlation that some would have you believe.  
   
2.  Recycled paper comes from trees.  It doesn't magically appear and represent a tree not cut down.  It represents a sheet of paper not in a landfill (which is still a good thing). If you take a step back and think about it - the "energy savings" by using recycled paper is a myth.  The recycled paper was already turned from a tree to pulp (primary transformation - which uses the largest part of the total energy required to make paper) - but recycled paper made it's way back into the cycle instead of ending up in a landfill.  Whether the paper is recycled or virgin, it still had to be turned from a tree to pulp first.  Part of the "energy savings" of the much heralded "Paper Calculator" compares the energy required to turn trees into pulp then to paper (primary transormation) versus making pulp into paper (not primary transformation).  This is like comparing apples to donuts.  
   
3.  While on the subject of the Paper Calculator - there is another reason it's a great marketing tool, but a bad representation of reality and science.  The "GHG/CO2 equivalent" comparison of virgin versus recycled is flawed.  One of paper's biggest contributors to GHG emissions is at the end of it's life, in the landfill.  As with most anything, it emits methane in a landfill.  The papercalculator doesn't attribute landfill methane/GHG emissions to recycled paper.  What that means is it makes the assumption that ALL RECYCLED PAPER is reclaimed, and recycled again - and even more dangerous, it assumes that all virgin paper ends up in a landfill.  Now, I think it's pretty safe to say that nobody recycles (or doesn't recycle) their paper based on the recycled content of the paper.  Recycled paper wouldn't exist without a fresh supply of virgin fiber into the cycle.  We're all part of the same cycle - it's not an "either/or." Let's end this ridiculous argument.
   
4.  To "bailsout"- that I guess is hoping for the electronic age to finally elimate the need for paper:  Paper manufacturing in the US requires roughly 75 billion kwH/year (we're fourth behind Chemical, Primary Metal, and Food manufacturing).  Guess where US based servers and data centers would come in - if they were actually manufacturers?  Sixth.  59 billion kwH/year.  Paper is manufactured largely with about 50% renewable energy (hydro and biomass largely). More renewable energy is used in the kraft process (fine paper- think copy paper) than in groundwood (think newsprint)- so the renewable energy component for copy is in the 70-90% range, depending on the mill.  Data centers and server farms can't claim this - they rely on the grid for their energy, which in this country is largely coal.  The number for data centers and servers is expected to grow quite rapidly over the next 10 years.  The paper industry number, sadly, is not.

Certainly we can all do a better job, and nobody I know is in favor of wrecking the environment so they can print an email - but I am disappointed when loose "science" is thrown around and absorbed and regurgitated as fact.
On Umbra on recycled vs. certified paper posted 1 year, 2 months ago 9 Responses