***********************************************
WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Paper
and Timber Waste Cause Forest Destruction
***********************************************
Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
January
11, 1996
OVERVIEW
& SOURCE
Following
is a wonderful synopsis of efforts to reduce paper and
timber
use as a means of removing clearly unsustainable resource
use
pressures on remaining native forests.
This item was posted
in the
usenet bulletin board sci.environment by "Rachel's
Environment
and Health Weekly."
LIST
NOTE
Just
getting around to catching up with several hundred articles
have
downloaded but not indexed for Gaia Forest Archives over past
2 busy
months. Some of the best ones I will be
sending on to the
list. Always check the date of our post _and_ the
date of the
actual
relayed message.
gb
*******************************
RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
Re:
Clear-Cut Alternatives
From:
Dave Pettingill <isobar@igc.apc.org>
Date:
1995/11/24
newsgroups:
sci.environment
RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH
WEEKLY #468
---November 16, 1995---
HEADLINES:
CUT WASTE, NOT TREES
==========
Environmental Research
Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis,
MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet:
erf@rachel.clark.net
===============================================================
CUT
WASTE, NOT TREES
The
attack on the environment by so-called "conservatives" in
Congress
has caused a radical re-thinking throughout the
environmental
community. People are recognizing that
they must
stop
working alone and must start building alliances.
Among
other developments, a new coalition has formed between
forest
activists, energy-conservation advocates, and toxic
pollution
fighters. Perhaps most importantly, this coalition
includes
people aiming to create (and retain) good jobs in their
communities. Their goal is to cut use of wood in the U.S.
by 75%
in 10
years. An excellent new report provides
the rationale, and
describes
the plan.[1]
Here's
the thinking behind the new coalition.
Lois Gibbs, of
Citizens
Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW) [Falls Church,
Virginia;
phone: (703) 237-2249] is spearheading an anti-dioxin
campaign. Dioxin is among the 2 or 3 most toxic
chemicals ever
discovered,
and it is produced by incinerators, by paper mills,
by
metals smelters, and by the production of many pesticides.
(See
REHW #290, #390, #391, #414, and #438.)
Now CCHW has joined
with
the Rainforest Action Network of San Francisco [phone: (415)
398-4404]
in a Wood Use Reduction Campaign. The goal is to reduce
wood
consumption in the U.S. by 75% within 10 years --an
ambitious
goal, but one that can serve as the "glue" to bring
many
environmental groups and economic development groups
together. Rainforest Action is in it to save the
world's
forests.
CCHW is in it to save forests, too, but their main aim
is to
reduce toxic dioxin and stupid waste disposal.
For
example, as Gibbs points out, paper (which, in the U.S., is
made
almost entirely from wood) is a major fuel for municipal
solid
waste incinerators, which are also a major source of toxic
dioxin
emissions. If solid waste incinerators were shut down this
act
alone would:
**
Significantly reduce the nation's serious dioxin problem;
** Stop
virgin wood products such as shipping pallets and paper
products
from being used mindlessly as fuel in incinerators (half
of all
hardwood harvested in the U.S. is for pallets, much of it
discarded
after one use);
**
Force municipalities to manage wood and paper waste
differently
(in other words, reprocess rather than landfill or
incinerate
them).
Gibbs
said recently, "At Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous
Waste,
we envision a wood reduction campaign that uses a
collaborative
model similar to our McToxics Campaign of 1987
[which
successfully forced McDonalds to stop using foam
clamshells
for packaging fast food]. ...Thanks to that campaign,
people
now look at foam packaging differently.
We need to do the
same
with the image of paper and wood waste, by informing
Americans
about the connections between the destruction of
forests
and dioxin." The campaign to
reduce wood consumption by
75%
also offers significant opportunities to create new jobs both
in
cities and in rural areas.
The
destruction of virgin forests is occurring on a massive scale
around
the world, in Indonesia, in Siberia, in British Columbia,
and in
Latin America. Worldwide, some 14
million acres of
rainforests
disappear each year. In the U.S., 95%
of virgin
forests
are gone, with only 5% remaining.
Forests are home to
most of
the world's species and most of the world's indigenous
peoples. Forests provide important free ecological
services
--holding
water on a grand scale, producing huge quantities of
oxygen,
and providing major cooling. (When the forests of
southern
Honduras were cut, the average (median) outdoor
temperature
rose 13.5 degrees Fahrenheit (7.5 degrees
Celsius).[2] In addition, forests serve human needs
directly,
producing
game, medicines, fruits, gums, nuts, resins, fiber, and
firewood.
Industrial
logging in forests is a major cause of ecological
destruction
and the loss of biodiversity. For
example, in the
U.S.,
some 350,000 miles of logging roads have been cut through
forests
--more than 7 times the total length of the U.S.
interstate
highway system. Only 10 percent of the
inhabited
Earth
remains in roadless condition. The
other 90 percent is
chopped
up by roads into segments of less than 8000 acres. This
is
startling considering we haven't approached the 100-year
anniversary
of the automobile. Logging is a major
cause of this
disturbance.
Now
environmentalists have determined to save the world's forests
by
confronting the major source of forest destruction: the rising
demand
for wood, particularly in the industrial world where wood
is wasted
on a grand scale. Among industrialized
nations, the
most
wasteful is the U.S. (France, for
example, has per-capita
paper
consumption that is 50% of ours.) The
U.S. logging
industry
expects a 46% increase in logging operations by the year
2040. If this comes true, U.S. logging in 2040
will equal
today's
combined logging by the U.S.,Canada and Sweden.
There
are two major paths that wood products follow when they
leave
the forest. One passes through
sawmills, plywood mills,
veneer,
or other wood panel mills, and then into the network of
building
construction, shipping, manufacturing, and furniture
industries.
The other path passes through pulp mills into the
larger
system of paper, paperboard, and fiberboard production.
Together,
the two paths --generally building materials and paper
--account
for more than 80 percent of industrial wood use in the
U.S.
(the other 20 percent includes fuel wood, wood chips, and
raw
logs for export).
Thus a
campaign to reduce wood consumption will focus on getting
wood
out of buildings, and getting wood out of paper. Getting
wood
out of buildings requires 2 basic steps:
(1)
Reduce wood in building construction, substituting modern
materials
(NOT steel or concrete, which create problems of their
own)
and efficient construction techniques.
Nearly 90 percent of
all
housing in the U.S. is constructed of wood and the average
new
home in the U.S. uses 1600 cubic feet of wood products.
Modern
materials and construction techniques can reduce the
needed
wood substantially.[3]
(2)
Building codes must be changed to allow construction using
recycled
wood (from old barns, for example) and earth materials
(rocks,
sand, silt, clay, and even straw bales [discussed
below]). The Uniform Building Code was adopted at a
time when
wood
supply was considered limitless. The
code must be changed.
Two
very promising --and time-tested --building materials are
adobe
(in dry climates), and rammed earth (in any climate); 15%
of the
population of France today lives in adobe or rammed earth
buildings. A relatively new construction material is
baled
straw,
which can be used in any climate.
Initially developed at
the
University of Arizona (Tucson), straw-bale buildings have now
been
built in many states and in Canada. Again, a major obstacle
is the
building code. Straw-bale homes are structurally strong,
very
energy-efficient, and fire-resistant.
Manuel A. Fernandez,
the
State Architect of New Mexico recently wrote, "ASTM [American
Society
of Testing Materials, in Philadelphia] tests for fire
resistance
have proven that a straw bale infill wall assembly is
a far
greater fire resistive assembly than a wood frame wall
assembly
using the same finishes." It turns
out that straw bales
contain
enough air to provide excellent thermal insulation, but
not
enough air to support a fast fire. (I
have been in a
straw-bale
house at Genesis Farm in Blairstown, N.J.; inside, it
has the
snug feel of a well-made adobe house.
From the outside,
it has
sharp, modern lines and an eye-pleasing tan stucco finish.
If you
didn't know the walls were baled straw, you wouldn't
guess
it.--P.M.)[4]
Getting
the wood out of paper is, if anything, easier than
getting
the wood out of building construction.
Today, quality
paper
is made from rice and barley straw in China, from sugar
cane
waste ("bagasse") in Mexico and India, and from the kenaf
plant
in Australia. There are 300 mills
around the world making
paper
without wood.
The
most promising wood substitutes for making paper are the
kenaf
plant, and straw --the leftover stalks from cereal grain
production.
Paper recycling can only carry us so far because the
paper
fibers break and become shorter when paper is recycled. To
give
recycled paper good qualities, new fibers need to be mixed
in. Those new fibers need not come from wood
--leftover stalks
from
farmer's fields will work nicely, and so will kenaf. Thus
the
city, as supplier of recycled fiber, can coordinate with
rural
producers of non-wood fibers, creating jobs and income for
both. (The hemp plant will produce high-quality
paper as well.
Kimberly-Clark,
a U.S. Fortune 500 company, operates a paper mill
in
France producing hemp paper for Bibles and cigarettes. But in
the
U.S. growing hemp is a serious federal crime--even hemp with
its
narcotic characteristics bred out. This
stymies development
of a
hemp industry. Walt Disney sells
clothing made from hemp,
but not
from fiber grown in the U.S.)
Marvelously
efficient is the use of agricultural residues to make
paper;
it requires no new land brought into production. A
small-scale
mill in British Columbia is making paper profitably
from
agricultural waste today, and 3 more mills are planned. The
small
scale is an advantage because it keeps capital needs low,
making
such mills suitable for community-scale economic
development.
In sum,
reducing wood use by 75% in 10 years seems doable, and it
puts
the environmental community into a new posture: cooperating
across
issues, and combining economic development with
environmental
protection.
And
there is one other big benefit: Reducing the use of wood to
maximize
social and environmental benefits will require us to
measure
our efforts in new ways. In many
different areas (forest
advocacy,
pollution prevention, recycling/waste management,
energy
conservation, and community development), we will need to
measure
our efforts against a long-term vision of where the paper
and
wood industries should generally be headed.
We will need to
set
targets for them, not leaving economic and social decisions
exclusively
in the hands of corporations any longer.
Finally we
must
judge ourselves by our willingness to demand a future that
more
than a minor variation of the status quo. Parts of the old
environmental
movement may regard their work in a new light, when
judged
by this criterion.
--Peter Montague
===============
[1]
Atossa Soltani and Penelope Whitney, editors, CUT WASTE, NOT
TREES;
HOW TO SAVE FORESTS, CUT POLLUTION AND CREATE JOBS (San
Francisco:
Rainforest Action Network [450 Sansome Street, Suite
700,
San Francisco, CA 94111; telephone:
(415) 398-4404; E-mail:
rainforest@igc.apc.org],
1995).
[2] J.
Almadenares and others, "Critical regions, a profile of
Honduras,"
THE LANCET Vol. 342 (1993), pgs. 1400-1402.
[3] For
further information, contact the Center for Resourceful
Building
Technologies in Missoula, Montana, a clearinghouse for
resource-efficient
building materials and techniques.
Phone
(406)
549-7678. Additional U.S. groups
promoting alternatives
are
listed on pgs. 53-61 of the report cited in footnote 1, above.
[4]
Books on adobe, rammed-earth and straw-bale construction are
available
from Real Goods, 555 Leslie Street, Ukiah, Calif.,
95482-5507. Phone 1-800-762-7325. Fax: (707) 468-9486; foreign
orders:
(707) 468-9214. Additional U.S. groups
promoting
alternatives
are listed on pgs. 53-61 of the report cited in
footnote
1, above.
Descriptor
terms: forests; paper industry; pulp;
lois gibbs;
citizens
clearinghouse for hazardous waste; cchw; rainforest
action
network; wood use reduction campaign; economic
development;
dioxin; msw; incineration; shipping pallets;
recycling;
mctoxics campaign; mcdonalds; indonesia; siberia;
british
columbia; indigenous people; native people; honduras;
roads;
logging industry; automobiles; biodiversity; uniform
building
code; adobe; rammed earth; straw bales; fires; fire
hazards;
thermal insulation; paper; kenaf; hemp; agricultural
waste;
china; india; mexico; australia; energy conservation;
corporations;
democracy; center for resourceful building
technologies;
building materials;
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