Recycled paper v Sustainable forests?

[The Drain]

A science question I hope someone here may be able to help me with...

My company is on the Climate Change bandwagon, to the extent that they're boringly religious on the subject but - I suspect - not really on top of the science behind reducing one's carbon footprint.

As part of my job I produce an in-house magazine several times a year. I am under pressure to make sure that the paper used is "100% recycled". The phrase will look good on our Annual Carbon Report.

My printer tells me that, in terms of being ecologically sound, recycling paper is nonsense. He says that the paper he currently uses for my magazine comes entirely from 'farmed sustainable forests'.

He says this is much better for the environment than recycling paper, because the latter requires ecologically damaging chlorine washes to remove the ink from the old paper - whereas freshly farmed paper is just that, and what's more, new trees are being grown all the time.


So who is right, and why?

[Earthborn]

What is best for the environment depends -- surprisingly enough -- on your environment. It costs energy to recycle paper. If one of those sustainable forests is nearby it may cost more energy to recycle it then to take it from that forest. But if the sustainable forest is very far away, it may take more energy to move it to you than it is to recycle it. If the energy is generated in a sustainable way, recycling may be more sustainable than getting the paper from a sustainable forest.

It also depends on what you do in your environment. Chlorine washes may be bad, but you might also use unbleached paper for your magazine. It will really give it that environmentally friendly look that is so popular among treehuggers. On the other hand, the paper factory may be very careful with what it does with the chlorine so that using it isn't all that more environmentally unfriendly, and it may also use other bleaching methods.

In short: there is no one single way of doing things that is the most environmentally friendly under all environments. But both sustainable forests and recycling probably help.

[paximperium]

Why not both? Your question is kind of a false dichotomy.

As already mentioned by Earthborn, it depends.

Mass scale recycling is pretty ecologically sound but you need economy of scale to be able to do it. For example San Francisco does massive recycling and does it well. This limits any harmful chemicals etc. that is needed to process the stuff.

Trying to recycle in smaller towns and cities are not as ecologically sound since just collecting the stuff is likely more harmful.

[Modified]

Make your magazine online-only.

[ChrisC]

I would say that unless the magazine serves an important function as a hard copy, Modified has a good suggestion. If it's anything like the internal publications where I last worked, the magazine's life cycle is basically layout > printers > distribution to employees > trash bin. Nobody really read the stuff since the important info tended to get passed around via email and WOM. I think it existed so that the owner could pretend to be a bigshot with a fancy company instead of an incompetent tool. But I digress. :)

Wait.. does that hurt your job? What I meant was that you need to increase circulation 10-fold . ;)

BTW, No slight on the quality of your mag intended with the trash bin remark. Ours deserved it's fate.

[quarky]

I'd like to see more printing on edible paper...even if it had to be soaked in water and cooked for 3 minutes.

[soylent]

I believe it's easier to turn news paper into toilet paper rather than to recycle it into more news papers.

In stockholm I believe most of the newspapers and plastic that goes into the recycle bin is turned into heat and power in one of the local CHP district heating plants(most of them are equipped to burn heavy oil, trash, forrest industry waste(wood chips...) or coal. Some of the plants on the network can also provide heat from giant heat pumps powered by nuclear and hydro).

[casebro]

So would anybody think that virgin paper is NOT bleached? Wood is not white either, look at a brown paper bag, or a cardboard box to see unbleached wood fiber.

I'd guess that recycled paper uses less of the other chemicals, lye, acids, etc, that are need to break down wood into it's constituent fibers. Then lots of water to flush the the unwanted components out. Then, you get to the bleaching process, that may not use chlorine at all. Chlorine is just the only 'bleach' that people are used to seeing in their daily experience.

So my guess is that recycled paper is better for the environment, if the pre-processsing and transport doesn't eat copious amounts of energy.

Like, they want us to recycle tin cans- but first we are supposed to use precious water to rinse them out.

[GreyICE]

The bleach is the actual environmental damage. Ask who makes the least damaging bleach.

[Delvo]

I guarantee you that neither method of obtaining paper has any effect on the "carbon footprint", which is about carbon dioxide released into the air, not just environmental effects in general.

If we're going to talk about environmentalism in general, then as a former forester, I must point out that "sustainable" forestry, like any other kind of farming and harvesting, is not genuinely sustainable. It puts various stresses on the soil which there is no way to compensate for, thus gradually making the soil less and less usable for growing life on it. (This is also part of why I object to farming for "biofuels".) Farming has been the one thing we've done that's had the greatest effects on our environments. Take a look at the "Fertile Crescent", where it was invented, today. Modern methods don't stop this process; they just slow it down. And some environments are more robust than others against these kinds of effects. So it might take thousands of years to become a problem, but it will happen unless something we don't have yet intervenes first.

The main other things I'd wonder about are the exact sources of the chemicals that are used in both processes. (What is "bleach" and where's it from? Where did they get the chlorine?...)

[quarky]

We're putting a beating on the globe's forests like never before, despite all the warning.
There must be a reason we're at war with forests. It gives the economy a temporary buzz, for sure...but it will also kill us in the long run, this war on forests.

I don't think we can live without trees, but we might be able to live without paper.

[The Drain]

Thank you for all these answers.

I obviously need to read up more about different types of bleaching, and how and when they're used in both new and recycled paper.

I can't do an online version of the magazine. Some of my readers live in parts of the world where access to the internet is slow or non-existent. A number of other readers, closer to home, are elderly and haven't really caught on to this 'electric interweb thingy'.

The reason I didn't pose this question with the possibility of doing both is because that is not how it has been presented to me. My employers really are insisting on "100% recycled: Good/Anything else (including 90%): Bad".

But the information here (including edible paper - thanks Quarky!) gives me enough ammo to be able to write a stiff letter to Management pointing out the error of their ways in being so simplistic in their attitude to this issue.

Thanks,
The Drain.

PS: I will of course be writing my letter with my ivory pen on double rebleached paper made out of finest tropical hardwood with ink squeezed from the fin of a blue whale...

Put another way, I do care about the environment/climate change/our carbon footprint/the planet's future, etc. I just don't like working from a position of ignorance. And I really don't like it when other people who are just as ignorant as me on any given subject still feel the need to lecture me on that subject and feel self-righteous about it. (I'm referring to my employers here - not the good people of JREF!).

[Dymanic]

Might even consider the possibilities for discarded magazines in carbon sequestering. My understanding is that things like magazines, newspapers, and telephone books essentially do not decompose in landfills, and I'm thinking if you had a landfill dedicated to the purpose, you could store a lot of carbon for a really long time. You'd still incur energy costs in collecting and transporting the material, of course, but none of the costs (or the environmental hazards) of the recycling process.

[mhaze]

A science question I hope someone here may be able to help me with...

My company is on the Climate Change bandwagon, to the extent that they're boringly religious on the subject but - I suspect - not really on top of the science behind reducing one's carbon footprint.

As part of my job I produce an in-house magazine several times a year. I am under pressure to make sure that the paper used is "100% recycled". The phrase will look good on our Annual Carbon Report.

My printer tells me that, in terms of being ecologically sound, recycling paper is nonsense. He says that the paper he currently uses for my magazine comes entirely from 'farmed sustainable forests'.

He says this is much better for the environment than recycling paper, because the latter requires ecologically damaging chlorine washes to remove the ink from the old paper - whereas freshly farmed paper is just that, and what's more, new trees are being grown all the time.


So who is right, and why?Your printer is right. 100% recycled as oposed to a fractional portion recycled would not be smart by any measure.