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Paper Manufacturer Launches "Print More" Campaign
innocent_white_lamb writes "Domtar, a major North American paper manufacturer, has launched an advertising campaign to encourage people to print more documents on paper. Domtar CEO John Williams opposes campaigns by other companies asking employees to be responsible with what they print. 'Young people really are not printers. When was the last time your children demanded a printer?' Mr. Williams said ... 'We've got to do some work about having them believe and feel that printing isn't a sort of environmental negative.' The industry expects that, absent this campaign, paper demand will decrease by 4% annually. Williams's comments did not go down well in some environmental circles."
It's not individuals that paper companies need to worry about in my opinion. When you have major gaming companies like Ubisoft claiming that they will no longer manufacture paper game manuals then you have a the beginnings of a major problem (at least if you are in the paper industry or whatever). If large companies stop printing manuals for games, or software, or stop printing instruction manuals for home appliances, and so on, you'll probably see an even bigger impact on paper companies than the losses of individuals skimping on paper use.
I don't print anything anymore. I don't own a printer. And I doubt that I will need one in the future. However I buy tons of video games, movies, appliances, and so on. If those things stop coming with paper manuals and books then it will make a difference.
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/108/1084491p1.html [Ubisoft Removing Paper Game Manuals]
Why do environmental groups get upset by paper? Paper is a very renewable resource. Trees get cut down, and grow back. When I'm done with it, it rots (I happen to compost mine). With this computer I'm typing on, rare metals had to be mined to make it, and when I'm done with it, it sits around for at least a few thousand years (or more?). I have no problem with paper.
I don't respond to AC's.
People frequently forget about all those pesky middle parts.
Trees are harvested. They're transported to the location making the paper. It's packaged and distributed to various tiers of warehouses. It's then distributed to retail outlets, and then to the point of use. From there, it's distributed to waste or recycling centers, or specialized centers for proper destruction. I'd be willing to bet the carbon footprint for the transportation is higher than the trees themselves that are used in the process.
Someone had a good point. The carbon is sequestered, assuming the paper is kept. Most places have more paper going in the trash than they do staying in long term storage.
When I was a kid, my parents took about 10 acres of empty land and planted trees on them. It consumed a good bit of time and fuel. Try planting rows upon rows of trees, and you'll find it's not a job to be done by hand. My dad passed away and my mom eventually moved. Google Maps satellite view showed the land to still be full of trees, but the street view (more recent) showed it to have been clear cut for other purposes. I'd guess by the person who bought the house (at least two owners later who renovated it) to sell the entire property as a horse farm. Dense trees don't make for good grazing land for livestock.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
and how that's supposedly good because the carbon is sequestered, etc. Not many posts about the chemical nasties involved in converting trees to pulp to paper, or where those nasties end up, or how much energy is required to harvest the wood, convert it, and deliver it, or how much waste is in the manufacturing of printers, ink cartridges, and ink.
If demand for paper continues to fall, know what that land will be used for? Growing trees. Instead of using that timber for paper, it'll be used for lumber or for biomass electricity generation (which has a net zero carbon emission).
So yeah, trust your instincts on this one... like nearly every processed item, wasting less paper is better for the environment.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
DAMN IT. I've had mod points rewarded to me twice in a row over the last week or so and I finally find a post with a poor mod rating that I'd like to mod up. The increased efficiency in terms of land and resources used for hemp paper versus tree paper is huge. On top of that, for all you puritans out there, it is well within our means today to grow strands that contain virtually almost no THC making the worry over individuals getting high off the crop non existent.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
My company is a collector of used electronic devices in Hong Kong. Once we received call from a division of the government to collect used printers. To our astonishment, we found a 10 meter sq. room full of used HP 1100 printers stacking to the roof. Turn out it's a result of some idiotic environmentalists attempt to use used papers in printing to "save the environment", which wore out the rubber rollers in the printers pretty quickly. Since the cost to repair is too high (thanks to HP!) they've to discard them.
How many papers they've been saving? Approx. a box or two. How many printers they destroyed and ended up in the field? Hundreds in a year.
Recycled printer papers that are loved by many environmentalists are also a major environment hazard. Ten times more water is needed to be consumed in order to bleach recycle papers than that of bleaching normal papers, not to mention the dumping ten times more of bleaching reagent into the water system.
While paper manufacturer's advocacy might not be welcomed by the mass, it's true that most people has wrong concepts in saving environment.
Mr. Williams said ... 'We've got to do some work about having them believe and feel that printing isn't a sort of environmental negative.'
OK, well;
1: Explain to me why "printing isn't a sort of environmental negative." Start by explaining how using energy and materials in cases where it is not worthwhile to do so is environmentally (or even economically) neutral or positive.
2: If step 1 proves to be impossible or tortured at best, tell me why you think your customers should be misinformed.
3: Re-read the section on free market economics about the importance of informed consumers.
4: Apologize for being an enemy of the benevolent ideals of the free market.
This is why people have problems with the free market. Not because an efficient free market is bad, but because oligopolist assholes like this guy work so hard to harm the free market. Even aside from whether he succeeds in damaging the free market, he is creating harmful imagery of what the free market is, which harms us all.
Of course, it is easy to throw stones. The harder question for me is: How do you fix it?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I present Trevor Blackwell's theory on how printing and then putting the paper in landfills may actually stop global warming:
http://www.tlb.org/faq.html (scroll to the bottom)
It is buried in a landfill (where decomposition releases methane, which is far worse than carbon dioxide.
Actually, paper doesn't degrade in a landfill. You can still dig up readable newspapers from the 1800's.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
A couple years ago, I was out at one of my relatives' farm, and noticed one of his fields was growing hemp. I wonder who they sold it to, and what it was made into.
This was in Canada though, might be different. I'm not sure if it's becoming common here or not, or what they're purposing it for, and what sort of regulatory headache it involves.
I thought it was interesting though. I'm all for more diverse, sustainable crops.
Sent from my PDP-11
From the article, a statement from Domtar CEO...
"No one is more interested in the well-managed forest than the paper industry."
I live in the Pacfic Northwest and I am surrounded by "managed" clearcuts.
The forestry industry has this odd idea that "managed" means planting one species, equally spaced for easy harvesting, and often not even a species native to the region. "Grow it fast, grow it thick" is the rule, not the exception.
The "managed" forests out here feel "dead". There is very little diversity in flora on the floor of the forest and I can only assume that is why it feels "dead". The animal life that depended on that diversity is absent. I remember walking through a "managed" re-forested area one time and it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn't being pestered by mosquitos or gnats. Odd. It wasn't until later that I realized that the stuff they feed on was missing from the forest--no food, no bugs. The diversity had been 'managed" right out of the forest.
"Managed" is a relative term, and open to damn near any interpretation you wish.
I seriously doubt that a paper manufacturer and an environmentalist would agree on those interpretations, especially when a dipshit like John Williams is involved.
> Instead of using that timber for paper, it'll be used for lumber or for biomass electricity generation (which has a net zero carbon emission).
Perhaps, perhaps not. Take your example of biomass. Think that doesn't have as much pollution as paper production? Hint: it ain't carbon neutral anymore than paper production is. To get decent land utilization you will be growing something faster growing than trees, probably with fertilizer. Then there is the energy to irrigate it, plant and harvest and there still isn't a biomass to usable fuel cycle that doesn't waste close to as much energy as it produces.
But regardless, land must produce more revenue than the property taxes so one way or another value WILL be reaped, regardless the environmental impact. Some will get flattened for development, some will become pasture land, farmland, whatever. That law of unintended consequences always bits ya. Ponder that before dreaming of a world without paper.
Democrat delenda est
Suppose you harvest an acre of hundred-year-old trees, and you plant three acres of trees. Next year, you harvest a second acre of hundred-year-old trees, and plant three more. In thirty-three years, you will have cut down 3,300 acre-years of growth. You will have replaced it with 1680 acre-years of growth. Not even counting the fact that you've destroyed 33 acres of quality second-growth forest and replaced it with 99 acres of farmed forest.
So when you hear "we plant three for every one we cut," just bear in mind that the person saying this to you is definitely trying to deceive you. There is no other possible motivation for that statement, because what they cut is in no way comparable to what they put in its place. They are mining the forest, and leaving you with the tailings.
If they were planting real second-growth forest, and if they were going to be around for a hundred years, then we could talk about environmental improvements, but that's not at all what this guy is talking about. Or if they were planting barren fields and harvesting the trees years later when they'd grown enough, you could say that they'd planted a crop and harvested it. But that's not what they said, and it's not even close to what they're doing.
don't get me wrong, i know it can't be all hugs and kisses, i eat meat and i understand the reality of eating meat. I'm ok with it at long as the animals got to live a content enough life and were slaughtered in a humane manner (which most are, and i vote with my wallet getting free range meat).
but shit like puppy mills is one of the few things that makes me truly angry. the animals suffer so much killing them would be a release.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Having just skimmed the paper, it doesn't look like they account for CO2 removed from the atmosphere by the growing trees. Here's a quick calculation of that:
Assumption 1: all plant matter which does not make its way into paper is burned, or otherwise releases its carbon as CO2, hence is neutral for this analysis. (It could net contribute to greenhouse if it releases as methane instead.)
Assumption 2: paper is 100% cellulose.
Cellulose is a polymer of (C5 H10 O5), which means that it is 4/9 carbon by weight. One unit of carbon burns to produce 11/3 = 3.667 units of CO2. So one unit of paper would burn to produce 44/27 = 1.630 units of CO2, and conversely, 1.63 tonnes of CO2 were removed from the atmosphere to make that paper.
So we're still behind on CO2. And, of course, there are all sorts of other environmental costs.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
"If they even manage to decrease the decline from 4% to 3%, they've succeeded in saving a lot of people's jobs."
Broken windows.
I would rather see those people get work in manufacturing things that are actually useful... most of the skills along that chain are entirely transferable. Of course, then we might have to retake some of our manufacturing from China, and the only way that could be made viable is to raise tariffs such that they are equivalent to the drain on our economy caused by shipping the work overseas in the first place. I ain't holding my breath.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Nothing to do with earth crunchy I am afraid.
Hemp clothing is great lasting. I had a pair of hemp jeans that lasted 5 years before wearing out. Normal cotton lasts a year if I am lucky.
That is propbably why we dont see much hemp clothing it lasts to long!
In the last decades, my country has been planted with millions of eucalyptus and wild pines, that are completely alien, to produce paper.
The results: We have almost no native forest, every summer there are big wild fires all around the country, the eucalyptus suck all the water from kilometres around, ruining the few farmers and herders that still subsist.
The planting areas that were abandoned because of fires of owner carelessness are now bare, completely exposed to soil erosion. These areas are will eventually become desert land in the next years if nothing is done.
Of course, the government could step in and take two measures:
But in these days of free-market fundamentalism, the government can't do shit because it would go against the "legitimate rights" of the land owners or something. When the whole country looks like Saudi Arabia without the oil, the land owners can stuff their legitimate rights up their asses and try to survive eating sand.
I don't think anybody's saying that. It's just ridiculous that this guy is complaining about companies putting "think before you print" messages at the bottom of emails to discourage people from transferring information to a (typically) LESS useful medium and wasting resources in the process. Also, reaching out through Facebook and Youtube to "resonate with youth" about paper-based printing is beyond stupid.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I live in Maine, a state where growing trees to support paper making has, for nearly 100 years, been a major part of the economy. The sustainable harvest of hemlock and spruce has actually increased the amount of forested land in this state to a higher percentage than at the time of European settlement. Of Maine's 19 million acres, about 17 million are forested. (Previous to colonization, Native Americans practiced slash-and-burn agriculture throughout much of the state. From the time of statehood forward, agriculture was a bigger economic contributor here than timber -- because trees grow slowly in northern climes -- until the financial panics of the 1890s, which wiped out most of the farming. This conveniently coincided with the growth of newspapers, which was largely helped by the invention of technology to create paper from wood pulp, versus linen / cotton. That made harvesting softwoods a profitable business.) We in Maine have had our problems with the environmental impacts of wood harvesting and paper making. Our rivers were, until the 1970s, foul and stinking highways for pulpwood and paper plant waste, until our senators George Mitchell and Edwin Muskie helped pass the Clean Water Act to clean up all such rivers. Even more recently, practices (such as clear-cutting) that negatively impact flora, fauna, soil and water have been changed, both by fiat and by industry cooperation. We still have offenders and problems, but most of Maine's large landowners (about two-thirds of the state's lands are owned by fewer than 10 corporations) care deeply about good forest stewardship. The greatest contribution of profitable tree growth for wood pulp is our tradition of permissive trespass. Unlike other states, here in Maine you can generally freely drive down private roads and use private lands for hiking, fishing, skiing, snowmobiling, camping, ATV riding, hunting and other outdoor activities. It is rare one finds a toll road / gate fee these days, and many large landowners go out of their way to help visitors find and get to places of interest. All this is made possible by paper. It's done more to keep Maine wild and protect its natural resources than any environmental group ever will. Paper, private land ownership and vigilant cooperation to protect our traditions is not "environmental negative." It's the only way to protect our resources, because people only protect that which they value. Less than 5 percent of Maine's land is in public ownership (e.g., state and national parks) but it is world-renown for its bounty of natural riches as "Vacationland." Paper did that, not some hippie who thinks hemp is a green strategy.
D
Cut trees are used for whatever brings the most profit. You talk about the paper industry like it's a single monolith, but it's actually a lot of little companies and big companies, each of which has their own practices. So what you say is probably true about some company or set of companies that you've had personal experience with, but it's not universally true.
And whether what you say is true for this particular paper company or not, making that nice paper you can put into your laser printer is nontrivial. It requires a lot of energy, and a lot of chemical processing. So the fundamental point of this article, mocking the idea that printing more is good, is correct. It is a really good idea to think before you print.
What this guy should be focusing on is how to adapt to the changing market, not how to get the market to stop changing. The market for beautiful acid-free paper whitened with peroxide is probably not going away any time soon, but the market for single-use printing is, and if you want to still be around in 20 years, it might be worth thinking about that.