How many trees are killed to make paper, and how much does recycling reduce that?
Posted on January 6, 2009
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Just wondering, because when I see big stacks of paper and paper being wasted, I imagine trees and animals suffering for our needs. Also I was wondering how recycling helps out as well.
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8 Responses to “How many trees are killed to make paper, and how much does recycling reduce that?”
forget about paper just look how much ethanol is going to cost the planet for the sake of saving the Environment
They are insane intending to replace most of the indigenous Forrest’s in the world ,with mono cultures for the production of Ethanol,
Non sustainable, chemically grown ,heavily irrigated (with water needed for communities)one specie Forrest’s,that have only plagues of insects as fauna which are controlled with pesticides.
Killing all bio diversity,in both flora and fauna ,adding to the destruction and extinction of species ,like nothing we have ever seen before.
All in the quest for alternative energy and to save the Environment ,
The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change by using biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits has resulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And that is making climate change worse because deforestation puts far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world’s fleet of cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined.
“Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil,” said Simone Lovera, managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmental NGO based in Asunción, Paraguay. “We call it ‘deforestation diesel’,” Lovera told IPS.
Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best and cheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investing billions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations in developing countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms. Oil palm has become the world’s number one fruit crop, well ahead of bananas.
Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel from petroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormous global thirst means millions more hectares could be converted into monocultures of oil palm. Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is very difficult.
The FAO’s State of the World’s Forests 2007 released last week reports that globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day — equivalent to an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includes plantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropical deforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, a forest economics expert who is affiliated with the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica.
“The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered by the increase of forests in the U.S., for example,” Palo told IPS.
National governments provide all the statistics, and countries like Canada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed no net change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largest producer of pulp and paper. “Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world what kind of changes have taken place there,” he said.
Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. More akin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environments to nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have been shown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native, fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are also commonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and to prevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.
Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities, resulting in a net loss of jobs. “Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity and local people,” Lovera said. Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or other plantations, it often forces the local people off the land and into nearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to grow crops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the pattern with pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, says Lovera.
Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar cane or other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared to grow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meet the ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soy prices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest into soy, she says. Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset their emissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of this planting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, which are just the latest threat to existing forests. “Europe’s carbon credit market could be disastrous,” Lovera said.
The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the use of reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been a tremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for tree planting projects. Very little of this money goes to small land holders, she says. Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing a recent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in some Asian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respective natural forests. Nor has the world community been able to properly account for the value of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.
One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250 billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbon emissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water. The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easily stopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery and governments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation. Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal to convert forest into farmland, says Lovera.
Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checked satellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and police to enforce the law where it was being violated. “Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two years in the eastern part of the country,” Lovera noted. The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to the local people. This community or model forest concept has proved to be sustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a bill returning the bulk of its forests back to local communities for management, she said.
However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries like Brazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be little natural forest left. “Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests have enormous value left standing,” Lovera said. “A moratorium or ban on deforestation is the only way to stop this.”
This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of Environmental Journalists.
© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service
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Recycling paper is good but the long strands that give paper it’s strength get shorter with every recycling. so certain paper is good recycled but things like paper grocery bags are no that good.
The odd thing is that paper made out of trees is a relatively new procedure. The Declaration of Independence was printed on hemp paper. We can grow hemp, for example, quickly and cheaply where trees take a long time to grow. Why can’t we go back to the old tried and true methods?
Trees are farmed. Just like carrots, peas, fish, cows… also farmed for our needs. Do you imagine them suffering as well?
pulpwood growers plant and harvest trees similarly to farmers who grow corn or wheat.
They plant a field… wait for the trees to mature and then chop… and then replant. The trees grown are fast growing
And thus… pulpwood growing is more environmentally friendly than a lot of other things that people do.
The old paper grocery bag… is more environmentally friendly than the modern plastic one. The paper one could be mulched and composted. The plastic ones (even the “biodegradable” ones) are just landfill waiting to happen.
Well, take it this way. A tree can produce 300 cigarettes. As they add in more other ingredients, I’d dareday they make at least 200 for one big tree that’s about 8 metre high.
Recycling is easy, just soak the waste paper and mash it up. Then reduce it to some liquid and let it dry, and you will get some paper.
I’ve had some experience on that. With our own tools we blend paper, soak, then mash, blend again, lay it down and we get to make bookmarks. Out of 5 pieces of news paper we made 40.
To help this get to join us at efclub (efclubss.multiply.com) and you won’t be required to do anything. Just make some reviews and whatsoever once perhaps a week or one month, that’s a lot - you won’t be blamed for just reading the information.
at the recycling plant newspapers, cardboard, and other paper products get shredded into tiny pieces. then they get soaked in water which makes a liquid called pulp. they lay the pulp over screens and let it dry. when it’s dry it makes brand new paper. you can also buy paper made from hemp, straw, or post consumer waste.
Actually, I read somewhere a long time ago that recycling in many areas was a fraud, and actually uses more energy than it saves. I have heard about a few citizen investigators following recycling trucks to their destination, and the trucks went to the city dump, NOT a recycling center. This has happened in the U.S., but I have no idea how widespread it is. No one reports on the status of recycling, and there is so much to recycle–newspaper, cardboard, plastic bags, glass bottles, plastic jugs, used motor oil, old tires, old clothes.
People will not recycle if there is no opportunity to do so in their local area, and if it is not made convenient for them, and those are the hard facts. It can be very frustrating. In my local area, I was taking old newspapers to large recycling bins for several months, and a few months ago, the bins were picked up from their locations and never brought back. Now there is no where to go to take old newspapers, and my brother tells me that dumping them in trash dumpsters is illegal, for crying out loud. We also have a large amount of used motor oil, and nowhere to bring it.
The fact is, the amount of trees cut down for paper could be stopped altogether if hemp plants were used, but the hemp plant, also known as marijuana, has been demonized by Big Business, because if hemp products were known and started to be used, it would put a HUGE dent in corporate profits. Hemp has thousands of uses, and the one responsible for seeing to it that its usefulness was kept from the public was the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.
Paper comes from trees and trees are a renewable product. I like the managed environment that Weyerhauser Lumber has on its website for how they work the forestry industry to stay in sync with the environment.