LEAD STORY: Do-It-Yourself Post-consumer Paper

FEATURE STORY: Trading Tigers for Coffee Tables: Losing Indonesia's Forests to Wood Products

NEWS BRIEFS
a) A-peeling Paper
b) Let Your Fingers Do The Typing
c) Government Leaders Recognized
d) Back Room Corporate Scandal Hits Paper Industry
e) Keeping Old Growth Out of Paper
f) Washington Goes Green
g) Sailing Without Wood
h) Spotlight on Buying Power

CAMPAIGNS & EVENTS
green building conference
sustainable agriculture meeting

LEAD STORY
Do-It-Yourself Post-consumer Paper

Numerous researchers are pursuing an electronic version of paper which can be reused, in an effort to bring us a truly "paperless" office. Recently, a Massachusetts-based researcher, Sushil Bhatia of Imagex Technologies has developed a new twist to the reusable paper concept reported Discover Magazine's, science news website in "The Paper Chase: Focused Blasts of Sound May be the Key to Saving Trees and Reducing the Flow of Garbage." Instead of perfecting "electronic paper," he has developed a process to make regular paper reusable. Bhatia's invention strips ink from regular paper, making it reusable, right in the office. The invention uses water and sound pulses to remove ink from paper, doing so little damage to the paper, that it is able to be deinked and reused multiple times. Water bubbles generally form around the inked part of a page. The sound waves cause the bubbles to implode and the resulting mini-explosion acts like a chisel which blasts the ink off the page. The process cleans a page in a few seconds and the ink can be filtered out of the water. The clean paper that remains can then be reused. Of course, the question of what to do with the remaining ink will have to be resolved, but this is among the many innovations that continue to show that society can do away with new virgin wood paper.

FEATURE STORY
Trading Tigers for Coffee Tables: Losing Indonesia's Forests to Wood Products

Indonesia is losing its forests due to the strong demand for wood products, reported The New York Times on September 13, 2002 in "Indonesia's Forests Go Under the Ax for Flooring" by Raymond Bonner. An estimated 50 sawmills along a four-mile stretch of road in Pekanbaru, Indonesia operate 24 hours a day, because the mills cannot keep up with the demand. After processing, the final products are headed for industrialized countries -- furniture for the United States, office stationery for European nations and flooring for China and Japan. Approximately 80 percent of Indonesia's timber trade is illegal. Corruption permeates every step of the process.

The result has been a rapid conversion of vast stands of pristine forests to "barren and scarred wasteland." Government statistics estimate that an area the size of Connecticut -- at least four million acres of forests -- is logged annually. As a result, the home of the endangered orangutan and the rare Sumatran tiger -- the lowland forests of Sumatra -- will be gone in only five years, according to government estimates. The forests in Kalimantan are expected to disappear within ten years.

The destruction is occurring even while researchers continue to find new species in Indonesia. Two Australian researchers recently identified a new owl in Indonesia -- the Little Sumba Hawk-Owl, reported a September 4, 2002 Reuters News Service article, "New Owl Species Found on Remote Indonesian Island." The researchers predicted that a number of new species of birds would be found here.

Indonesian environmental organizations site the U.S. consumer as playing a crucial role in the devastation of the country's forests. Indonesia's experience is a prime example of the consequences of the industrialized world's insatiable and unsustainable demand for wood products.

NEWS BRIEFS

a) A-peeling Paper
In a call to make the most of agricultural wastes, a Japanese scientist, Hiroshi Morishima, from Nagoya City University was in Johannesburg to demonstrate how the waste created on banana plantations can be made into paper and fabric, according to the August 29, 2002 article by Joseph Brean in the National Post. According to Dr. Morishima, the 100 million tonnes of annual banana waste could supply more than half of the world's consumption of paper. Approximately 170 million tonnes of paper, mainly from wood pulp, were used globally in 2001. The United Nations estimates that this consumption will increase by five-fold by 2010.

b) Let Your Fingers Do The Typing
California's Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) eliminated the need for hard copies of their local telephone directory, reported the September 2002 issue of the GreenBusiness Letter in "Ringing Endorsement." Each directory combines the white and yellow pages and weighs more than six pounds. DTSC loaded a compact disk of the entire directory onto its local servers, so that employees can access the directory from their own computers. This move eliminated 150 linear feet of shelf space and 1.8 tons of paper. Pacific Bell had provided the compact disk to the agency at no cost.

c) Government Leaders Recognized
Various federal agencies and officials were recognized for their efforts toward environmentally preferable purchasing, waste prevention and other "green" measures by the White House in their Closing the Circle Awards. The General Services Administration (GSA), the main arm of federal purchasing, has changed purchasing procedures to make the process more flexible and to ensure the best price for post-consumer recycled paper. The Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, meanwhile, has implemented a waste prevention program that recycles a wide variety of materials from cardboard to construction and demolition debris.

d) Back Room Corporate Scandal Hits Paper Industry
Paper companies did not escape the recent spate of corporate scandals. A class action antitrust lawsuit is proceeding which alleges paper linerboard manufacturers of conspiring to decrease their production, in an effort to force supply to fall and prices to rise, according to the September 6, 2002 article "Class Action Antitrust Suit Wins 3rd Circuit's Approval" by Shannon P. Duffy in The Legal Intelligencer. Linerboards are primarily used in corrugated containers, which generally contain high post consumer content. The cost of recycled products has been an issue in their acceptance in the marketplace, but corrugated containers have been a recycled success story among paper products, because they have been competitively priced.

e) Keeping Old Growth Out of Paper
ForestEthics and other forest activists are keeping up the pressure on paper retailers to eliminate their supply of old growth in wood products, according to "Activists Shred Paper Retailers Over Use of Old-growth Trees," by Christopher Chipello and Joseph Pereira published in The Wall Street Journal on September 9, 2002. ForestEthics works to shift consumption away from products that originate from the most valuable forests. ForestEthics is bringing attention to the definition of "old growth." Ecosystems differ in terms of the maximum average age of individual trees. In some ecosystems, such as the boreal forests in Canada, the individual trees do not live to be a thousand years old, however the ecosystem is pristine and the forest is worth conserving.

f) Washington Goes Green
On September, 18, 2002, Washington State Governor Gary Locke signed Executive Order 02-03 "Sustainable Practices by State Agencies." Executive Order 02-03 requires state agencies to establish sustainability objectives and prepare a biennial Sustainability Plan. The agencies are to focus on issues such as resource consumption, the purchase of environmentally preferable goods and facility construction. The long term goals of the initiative include a shift to recycled materials in purchasing and construction, expanding markets for environmentally preferable products and services and reducing or eliminating waste as an inefficient or improper use of resources. Depending on the implementation of this Executive Order, the goals and plans could greatly impact the amount of wood consumed by Washington.

g) Sailing Without Wood
Alternatives to virgin wood exist for almost all products. While institutions must systematically implement alternatives to virgin wood products, individual consumers should play a role as well. On September 29, 2002, the New York Times reported that a group of Americans had built and sailed a 3,000 pound boat made of wine corks in "Launching a Dream on a Portugese River" by Brandt Goldstein. Approximately 166,000 corks were shaped into giant logs held together by fish net and ropes to make a boat 22-feet long, 5 feet wide and 7 feet high, based on the design of an ancient Viking vessel. The boat was sailed down the Douro River in Portugal and the crew was greeted by fireworks and cheers as they traveled. Although a somewhat whimsical case study, it highlights that alternatives to wood can be effective and inspiring and demonstrates that wood reduction does not negatively impact quality of life.

h) Spotlight on Buying Power
Purchasing by large institutions, such as governments, hospitals, colleges and corporations plays an important role in protecting the environment, reported E Magazine in "Buying Green" by Jim Motavalli and Josh Harkinson in the September/October 2002 issue. There are 87,000 federal, state and local governments in the United States spending $385 billion a year on goods and services, including wood-based products such as office paper. The federal government alone uses 10,000 sheets of paper every hour. Due to a Clinton era Executive Order on "green" government purchasing, copy paper used by the federal government contains 30 percent post-consumer recycled content. Succumbing to pressure from NGOs, corporations such as Home Depot, Ikea, Centex Homes and Lowes have also played a role in "greening" purchasing, shifting consumption away from the use of old-growth wood.

CAMPAIGNS & EVENTS

Austin will host the first annual International Green Building Conference and Expo on November 13-15, 2002, sponsored mainly by the US Green Building Council. For more information, see www.ci.austin.tx.us/greenbuilder/nl_sept_newsletter.htm.

The National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture's Annual Meeting and Conference will be held on February 21-24, 2003. For more information, see www.SustainableAgriculture.net.