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 ForestForests' Retreat: Page 2 A major use of timber is newsprint. Every Sunday edition of The New York Times consumes 75,000 trees (Bohan et al. 1996). Each issue of Audubon magazine, published by the National Audubon Society bimonthly, consumes 1,500 trees to make the 150 tons of glossy paper used to print 500,000 copies, according to its own research (Webster 2001). The trees used in the making of this paper were cut after 12 years by a mechanical harvesting machine that periodically clearcuts and replants with only one type of tree, creating an unnatural monoculture (Webster 2001). To remove the cellulose, chlorine is used, which releases .004 pounds of chlorine and chlorine gases into the air (Webster 2001), less than in the past but still an environmental threat. This organization, like many using large amounts of non-recycled paper, claims that the monocultures are teeming with wildlife (Webster 2001) and, by all appearances, does not consider other alternatives for the manufacture of its magazine. Other magazines, such as National Geographic, also use unrecycled, glossy paper. By contrast, The Nature Conservancy decided in the 1990s to abandon use of virgin paper for their magazine, even if it meant a less glossy finish, and now prints on recycled paper. Many other conservation organizations have followed suit.
Tropical woods are also used to manufacture paper. With conservation and recycling by consumers in North America, Europe and Japan, no tropical forest trees would need to be cut for paper. The majority of newspaper used in the United States, which is the world’s largest consumer of paper, is thrown into landfills or burned (Bohan et al. 1996). Many tree-based products, from shipping crates to plywood and paper, could be made from other materials, both non-wood and re-used wood. Corporations feed a market hungry for inexpensive raw material. The trees are sold for almost nothing by the countries of origin, resulting in high profit margins for logging companies.
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