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 ForestPreserving Forests: Page 1 Much of the logging in the world is a result of markets provided in the United States, Japan and Europe for wood and wood products. Because paper pulp is cheap, there is little effort to find substitutes or even to recycle the millions of tons of paper thrown into landfills each year. The use of trees for making paper is government-subsidized, encouraging waste and destruction of forests. Tree farms have failed to meet the enormous demand for paper. Financial incentives to recycle or use other materials should be made by consuming countries. Finding substitutes for lumber and raw material for paper will be crucial in protecting entire forests. The United States imports 800 million pounds of paper from Brazil every year, to the detriment of that country's forests. In spite of computers and Internet communications, total amounts of paper used in the United States have not decreased; 4.3 million tons of paper are used in US offices alone each year, and millions more tons are used in newsprint, magazines and other paper products. Because of a lack of economic incentive, only a small portion of this paper is being recycled into new paper. In fact, studies of landfills have shown that 40 percent of material in these dumps consists of unrecycled newspapers.
Innovative approaches are needed to encourage recycling and to end subsidies and the importation of wood chips and newsprint from forests around the world. Some of the alternatives to paper made from wood are already in use. Thousands of years ago, Egyptians produced paper from papyrus reeds, and rice is still used to make paper in parts of East Asia. Cotton and flax are the raw materials of fine quality paper used for currency and other purposes.
Many other plant species are now seen as substitutes for wood pulp in making paper. In A Wealth of Wild Species, Storehouse for Human Welfare, Norman Myers (1983) mentions one of these, a plant called kenaf, that is a distant relative of cotton and okra. This plant has been cultivated for centuries in Asia for making burlap bags. A fast-growing, reed-like plant, kenaf shows great potential in the manufacture of paper. Its straight, slender stem has no side-stems, nor does it produce the kind of resins that must be eliminated when wood pulp is processed for paper. Planted like corn, it is ready for harvesting in four months and produces five times more pulp per acre than a pine tree plantation (Myers 1983). In research conducted by the US Department of Agriculture, kenaf has proven an excellent substitute for paper in newspapers and even bank notes (Myers 1983). A few kenaf farms have been established without government sponsorship in Texas and other southern states, and already many organizations are printing newsletters using kenaf instead of wood-based paper. Processing kenaf does not involve the serious water pollution caused when cellulose is removed from wood and pulp is bleached with chlorine. Air pollution from wood pulp processing plants has been injurious to human health (Verhovek 2000).
Earth Island Institute of San Francisco, California, has published a report, Forest Friendly Paper Guide, giving more information on kenaf and other non-tree substitutes for paper, including a new paper product by Arboken of Canada that is made from wheat straw, recycled corrugated cardboard and calcium carbonate filler. A publication called Guide to Environmentally Sound Papers, issued by an organization called Conservatree, lists more than 400 types of "green" paper. Among these are recycled, kenaf-based, hemp, sugarbeet and corn, grass and crop waste paper. (These can be obtained from Earth Island Institute. See the list of organizations in this book for the address.)
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