Tag: papers

No Paperless Office Yet

  • For five years, the environmentalist group Greenpeace held protests against the Kimberly Clark Corporation, maker of Kleenex tissues, for cutting Canada’s Boreal Forest and other forests around the world for its products. (Photo source: Wikimedia Commons)

When the computer-age took
off in the 1990s, lots of
people thought we’d use a
lot less paper. But that
hasn’t happened. Julie Grant
reports on why environmentalists
are so concerned about all
the paper we’re still using
in our offices and homes:

Transcript

When the computer-age took
off in the 1990s, lots of
people thought we’d use a
lot less paper. But that
hasn’t happened. Julie Grant
reports on why environmentalists
are so concerned about all
the paper we’re still using
in our offices and homes:

Allen Hershkowitz knew that the computer revolution wasn’t going to lead to a paper-less society. He’s been a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NRDC, since people first started using email.

“Very early on, even at NRDC, we started to see people printing out documents that would otherwise have been retyped or emails that shouldn’t have been printed out.”

Hershkowitz says Americans use 7-times more paper than the average person on the planet. And computer printouts are just the beginning. Packaging, cigarettes, tissues and toilet paper – Hershkowitz has seen firsthand the devastation the demand for all that paper it’s causing.

“Ancient forests, forests that have existed way before Christ and Moses and Mohammed, for 10,000 years, are being cut down for toilet paper. A product we use for 2-3 seconds. This does not make sense.”

Hershkowitz says this deforestation causes more global warming pollution than all the trucks, buses, planes and ships in the world combined. He scoffs at products like 3-ply toilet paper, and compares using them to driving a gas-guzzling Hummer.

In Europe and Asia, much more of the toilet paper is made from recycled paper. Americans get beat up in the international press for allowing their delicate buttocks to devastate the world’s forests.

For five years, the environmentalist group Greenpeace held protests against the Kimberly Clark Corporation, maker of Kleenex tissues, for cutting Canada’s Boreal Forest and other forests around the world for its products. Greenpeace’s campaign against Kimberly Clark took late night political comedian Stephen Colbert by surprise.

Colbert: “Now for starters, who knew toilet paper came from trees? I always assumed it came from cartoon bears.”

Greenpeace recently ended their protests. Kimberly Clark agreed that by next year 40% of the fiber in their tissue products would come from recycled paper. But while environmentalists support this concession, it does not please Mr. Colbert.

Colbert: “Have you seen recycled toilet paper? Environmentalists, I swear, if you take away my plush toilet paper, I’m just going to use the next softest thing – spotted owls.”

Most paper makers aren’t opposed to using recycled material in their products. Dan Sandoval is an editor at the publication Recycling Today. He says most cardboard boxes and newspapers are already made from recycled paper.

And that recycled toilet tissue? He says that’s usually made from old office paper. The stuff we use for printing and writing. But a lot of times office waste is all thrown together – and isn’t clean enough to be recycled into something new.

“You know, when you’re collecting it all together here, you’re going to get some telephone books, some post-it notes and things like that that people are throwing together. Plastic windowed envelopes. Some of that stuff is like, it’s kind of iffy on that. So you get more material, but the quality goes down.”

Sandoval says that means the paper mills have to invest in a lot more cleaning equipment. And some times it costs more than just cutting down trees. Still, he says the trend for companies around the world is toward more recycled content. Environmentalists want paper companies to move faster.

And they say consumers also need to do their part. In the office, they want people to print less, and at home, they’re asking people to stop buying toilet paper that’s 3 layers thick.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Reducing Gift Wrap Waste

  • According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American uses two pounds of wrapping paper a year. (Photo source: 5ko at Wikimedia Commons)

There may be nothing prettier than
beautifully wrapped gifts under the
Christmas tree. But some environmentalists
say the cost of that beauty is too
high – and they want people to stop
wasting so much paper on gift-wrapping.
Julie Grant has more:

Transcript

There may be nothing prettier than
beautifully wrapped gifts under the
Christmas tree. But some environmentalists
say the cost of that beauty is too
high – and they want people to stop
wasting so much paper on gift-wrapping.
Julie Grant has more:

Americans produce 6 million extra tons of waste between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

All that trash is enough to make Bob Lilienfeld cringe. He runs what’s called The Use Less Stuff Report. Lilienfeld says, one way people can reduce all the holiday waste is to stop wrapping presents.

“When you think about, wrapping paper is one of the most disposable items we have. It doesn’t provide any real functional value. And it’s used for basically a minute. And then it’s torn off and thrown away. So, from the environmental perspective, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Based on the last available data by the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American uses two pounds of wrapping paper a year. Lilienfeld says about half of that is used during the holiday season.

“If you cut that in half, down to a pound, that would save, what are there, about 300-million people in the country? We’re talking 300 million pounds. That’s a lot of paper.”

But it’s so pretty. And some people say that paper does serve a good purpose. Besides being pretty, it also helps to hide the gift.

Lizzie Post is the great, great-granddaughter of Emily Post – famous for her etiquette advice. Post says a wrapped gift is part of holiday decorum.

“You don’t want to just plunk down a box, straight from the store, and say, ‘here you go.’ That sort of has a lackluster feel to it.”

And it’s a tradition. Gift wrapping has been around for a long time – maybe as far back as 105 A.D. and the invention of paper. They started selling mass produced wrapping paper in the U.S. somewhere around1920.

Post says it looks nice, it shows care, and it’s fun.

“I think we’ve gotten used to the idea of unwrapping something or unfolding it and having that element of surprise there. And I think we wouldn’t want to lose that. That’s a nice tradition that we’ve all gotten used to.”

But Post says there are lots of creative ways to wrap gifts that aren’t wasteful. She suggests using cloth, reusing wrapping paper, or buying gift wrap made from recycled paper.

And after talking with a few shoppers, you can see how tough it would be to get people to stop wrapping gifts altogether. Here’s what a few had to say.

Shopper 1: “It would be hard for me to imagine that we would get to a point that we would say, ‘gee it’s pretty wasteful, so we won’t wrap any presents this year.’ I doubt that that would cross our minds.”

Shopper 2: “Why are they telling me to ruin a Christmas tradition? I mean, as if I didn’t already feel guilty enough about the mass consumerism that is Christmas. Now I’m being told not to wrap gifts. No, I’m certain they’re right about the mass of waste it’s going to create.”

The environmentalists who want us to use less paper don’t want to ruin the holidays. Bob Lilienfeld just wants people to look around for new ways to make gifts surprising – without piling up the trash.

“Go down to your basement, open your closets, go up to your attic and look at the paper that you already have on hand. And odds are you already have enough wrapping paper to make it through.”

At least for this year. At his house, Lilienfeld says he’s buying concert tickets for his teenagers, so they don’t need wrapping. And he’s hiding the gifts for his 3-year old – a scavenger hunt can be so much fun!

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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The Price of Recyclables

  • Mark Murray, with the nonprofit Californians Against Waste, says that in the space of one month, October 2008, the price for mixed paper on the global market plunged from $100 a ton to less than $30. (Photo by Erin Kelly)

If you want to get a sense of how the overall economy is doing, look outside your window the night before garbage and recycling day. Last fall, you’d have seen trucks full of cardboard circling the neighborhood. By winter, the cardboard poachers had disappeared. That’s because wastepaper – like other recyclables – feeds into a multi-billion dollar global commodities market that rises and falls just like housing prices and stocks. Amy Standen has more:

Transcript

If you want to get a sense of how the overall economy is doing, look outside your window the night before garbage and recycling day. Last fall, you’d have seen trucks full of cardboard circling the neighborhood. By winter, the cardboard poachers had disappeared. That’s because wastepaper – like other recyclables – feeds into a multi-billion dollar global commodities market that rises and falls just like housing prices and stocks. Amy Standen has more:

Last winter, Carolyn Almquist had a problem. Carolyn’s in charge of exports for APL transportation in Oakland, California. It’s her job to move shipping containers full of American exports, like wastepaper, to factories over in Asia. The problem was, the factories in Asia didn’t want them.

“There was no buyer. It would arrive at our terminal, say, in Jakarta, and no one would pick it up.”

Asian paper mills were canceling deals with the ships halfway across the Pacific. And Carolyn – who’s in charge of APL’s exports – was the first to hear about it.

“I’m getting an email saying, ‘what are you people doing? Don’t send stuff without a buyer.’”

Waste paper is the country’s number one export, by volume, so when prices fall, it’s not just Carolyn who’s in trouble.

“Hey, Alex, good morning! Steve Moore calling.”

Steve runs a company called Pacific Rim Recycling, 40 miles north of San Francisco.

“Got any updates for me on the marketplace?”

Every day, he calls around to see how much people are paying for things like newspaper, water bottles, old envelopes.

“What about corrugated?”

Most of our recycled cardboard, and a lot of our plastic ends up at Asian factories where it’s turned into iPhone boxes, polyester shirts, that are then shipped right back to the US market.

Until, that is, we stop shopping.

“When people stop buying those goods and products – the VCRS and the TVs from China – there’s no need for the boxes to go around them.”

That’s Mark Murray, with the nonprofit Californians Against Waste. He says that in the space of one month, October 2008, the price for mixed paper on the global market plunged from $100 a ton to less than $30. In two months, plastic water bottles dropped from $500 a ton, to less than $100.

“What recycling experienced in the last six months is really the same thing the entire global economy has been experiencing.”

So, when the economy falters, recyclers suffer. Some shut down entirely. Others were forced to simply dump unsellable paper into local landfills.

Steve Moore hunkered down to wait it out.

“We couldn’t sell anything for six weeks. All this material was backing up, I had to rent space next door. I had to sell it at $10 a ton, just to get rid of it.”

By February, prices had started to recover, as demand for consumer goods began picking up a bit – but they’re no where near the highs of a year ago.

“And a ton of paper today is worth $100 a ton. Last year, it was worth $200 a ton. It’s a very volatile market, so the economics of that are pretty severe.”

One reason the market’s so volatile is that with recyclables, the supply never stops. No matter how much or how little those Asian factories want our cardboard and our plastic water bottles, we are going to keep putting them out on the sidewalk.

Oil manufacturers can turn down the spigot when demand drops, to control supply so it keeps pace with demand. But bales of paper and plastic just take up too much space. And here at Pacific Rim recycling, the trucks keep rolling in.

(sound of bottles and cans at Pacific Rim)

“The volume of this material is huge!”

But at least it’s moving. Prices for our recyclables might be lower than their peak a year ago, but Steve Moore can relax again.

And, over at the Port of Oakland, Carolyn’s no longer getting angry emails.

“Things are picking up again. Financing has freed up. The banks are a little less nervous, If we had a ship here today, she’s be sailing Oakland full. Life is a little bit easier.”

And Carolyn Almquist knows as well as anyone in this industry to enjoy it while it lasts.

For The Environment Report, I’m Amy Standen.

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School’s Back, Sans Textbooks

  • Several universities are testing out the new Kindle DX, hoping to save money and paper on printing (Photo source: K.lee at Wikimedia Commons)

This fall, six colleges and
universities are throwing out
a lot of their textbooks. Rebecca
Williams reports they’re testing
out the idea of students using
electronic readers for some
classes instead of textbooks:

Transcript

This fall, six colleges and universities are throwing out a lot of their textbooks. Rebecca Williams reports they’re testing out the idea of students using electronic readers for some classes instead of textbooks:

The schools are Case Western, Arizona State, Reed College, Pace University, The University of Virginia’s business school and Princeton.

They’re all testing out the new Kindle DX – it’s got a large screen that the text of textbooks will be loaded into.

Cass Cliatt is with Princeton. She says the University prints out 50 million sheets of paper a year – even though a lot of course material is online these days.

“So the irony is that the availability of digitized text has lead to an actual increase in printing because people don’t like to read a lot of text on computer screens.”

But she says these are different. The new Kindles let you highlight stuff and take notes the way you might in an actual textbook. So in theory, students won’t need to print.

Cliatt says they’ll be testing that theory to see if universities can save paper and money on printing.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Sending a City’s Garbage Up in Flames

  • Michigan Waste Energy Chief Engineer Brad Laesser checks the cameras and emissions data at Detroit's incinerator. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)

Back in the 1980s and 90s,
dozens of communities across
the US built incinerators to
get rid of their trash. Many
of them financed the massive
furnaces with bonds they’re just
now paying off. And now that
those debts are off their books,
some cities are re-thinking whether
burning trash makes environmental
and economic sense. Sarah Hulett reports:

Transcript

Back in the 1980s and 90s,
dozens of communities across
the US built incinerators to
get rid of their trash. Many
of them financed the massive
furnaces with bonds they’re just
now paying off. And now that
those debts are off their books,
some cities are re-thinking whether
burning trash makes environmental
and economic sense. Sarah Hulett reports:

About 300 garbage trucks dump their loads each day at the nation’s biggest
municipal incinerator.

“You see the conveyor house going across, that’s conveying the fuel to the
boilers.”

That’s Brad Laesser. He’s the chief engineer at the Michigan Waste Energy
facility in Detroit.

The “fuel” he’s talking about is shredded-up trash.

And he says that’s the beauty of facilities like this. They produce electricity.

“So right now we’re putting out about 50 megawatts. But we can go to
here.”

Laesser points to 70 on the output gauge. That’s enough electricity to power
about half the homes in Detroit. And the leftover steam is used to heat and
cool more than 200 buildings downtown.

Sounds great, right?

Well, Brad Van Guilder of the Ecology Center says not so much.

“Be wary of people coming and talking to you about large, expensive magic
machines that are going to dispose of your waste for you.”

Van Guilder says municipal waste incinerators are major contributors to
smog, and spew dangerous pollutants like dioxin, lead and mercury.

And he says huge furnaces like Detroit’s make it nearly impossible to get
viable recycling efforts off the ground.

“Think about what’s in the trash that you throw out every day. One of the
most important components is paper and plastic.”

Both can be recycled. But Detroit has not had a curbside recycling program
for the past 20 years. That’s because the contract with the incinerator
required that all trash picked up at the curb be used to keep the furnaces
burning.

That changed this summer, though – when the contract expired. Now about
30,000 households are part of a curbside recycling pilot project. And there
are drop-off sites where people can take their recyclables.

(sound of recycling center)

Matthew Naimi heads an organization that runs several drop-off sites, and –
maybe surprisingly – he’s okay with the incinerator. Naimi says he sees
trash disposal and recycling as two separate industries.

“I realized that if we shut the incinerator down before we got a good
established recycling program running, we’d be burying our recyclables
instead of burning them.”

And officials with Covanta – which runs the Detroit incinerator – agree that
recycling and incineration can work together.

Paul Gilman is the chief sustainability officer for Covanta. He says landfills
are the problem – not recycling.

“Landfills and energy-from-waste facilities, that’s where the competition is.
It isn’t at the upper step of recycling.”

He says cheap landfill space makes the economics of incineration difficult.

But he’s hoping that could change with the passage of a climate change bill
in Washington. Gilman says in Europe and Asia, trash incinerators like
Detroit’s don’t get treated the same way as power plants fueled with coal or
natural gas.

“So in Asia, under the Kyoto protocols, a facility like this actually generates
what are called greenhouse gas credits. They’re reducing greenhouse gasses
by the act of processing solid waste and keeping it from going to a landfill.”

Where trash produces methane – a potent greenhouse gas.

But the people who want the incinerator shut down say they don’t believe
burning trash is the greener way to go. They want the city to landfill its
waste while it builds an aggressive recycling program.

So far, they’re not getting what they want from city leaders.

The board that oversees how Detroit handles its trash recently voted to go
with incineration for at least the next year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sarah Hulett.

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Paper Demand Drops as Newspapers Close

  • In a difficult market, more newspapers are choosing an online-only format. This means demand for pulp and paper products has gone down. (Photo by Erin Kelly)

Newspapers across the nation are either closing, shifting to a web-only presence or reducing the number of print editions they put out each week. Lester Graham reports that means a lot less newsprint is needed:

Transcript

Newspapers across the nation are either closing, shifting to a web-only presence or reducing the number of print editions they put out each week. Lester Graham reports that means a lot less newsprint is needed:

It takes a whole lot of trees to make newspapers. According to the National Geographic’s documentary “Human Footprint”, it takes 191-million trees to make all of the U.S. newspapers each year. Well, you can cut that back– a lot. Martine Hamel is with the Pulp and Paper Products Council. She says daily newspapers closing or cutting back has meant a lot less demand for newsprint.

“We’re just getting worse and worse month after month. We just released the February figures earlier this week and demand in North America was down 33-percent for the month. So it’s really, absolutely huge.”

And more newspapers are on the brink. Newsprint usually contains a fair amount of recycled paper. With less demand, markets for recycled paper will suffer further.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Books With a Green Ending

  • The reporter's husband reading "I Can Save The Earth" to their daughter. (Photo by Charity Nebbe)

Book publishers have always had
a close relationship with trees, mostly
dead ones. Now many publishers are trying
to make nice with the planet by introducing
green books on environmental themes and
often on recycled paper. Charity Nebbe finds this trend has reached the
children’s section of your local bookstore:

Transcript

Book publishers have always had
a close relationship with trees, mostly
dead ones. Now many publishers are trying
to make nice with the planet by introducing
green books on environmental themes and
often on recycled paper. Charity Nebbe
finds this trend has reached the
children’s section of your local bookstore:

(sound of reading)

That’s my husband reading to our three year old daughter. They’re reading “I Can Save
the Earth: One Little Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.” It’s a new book
from a new division of Simon and Schuster called “Little Green Books.” Simon and
Schuster is not the only publisher trying to take advantage of the modern green
movement.

Melanie Rhodes is a children’s book buyer for Borders.

“I would say, for Fall 08 rolling into 09, I would say this is the one new trend. We’re
seeing Green product, recycled with soy based ink, or a lot of detail on the product saying
it’s planet friendly.”

Rhodes decides what will be on the shelves at Borders for babies and toddlers.

Ruta Drummond buys for the older kids – picture books for 3-7 year olds. The green
books she’s getting are on environmental themes, rather than on recycled paper.

“I’m starting to see titles: “That Litter Bug Doug”, “Michael Recycle”, “We Are
Extremely Very Good Recyclers”.

She’s also seen a few publishers try to claim the green mantle without really earning it.

“There was a publisher with a classic white book, and they said, ‘oh, well, we have a
green version. And they made the cover green. It was a green version.”

Literally green – the content was unchanged, the paper the same. Of course publishers are
in the business to sell books, so they’ll do what they have to do.

Parents who buy the books have another goal in mind. Presumably they want to raise
environmentally aware and responsible children. Can a book help them do that?

Elizabeth Goodenough teaches a course on Children’s literature for the Residential
College at the University of Michigan. She’s not a fan of books specifically designed to
teach kids a lesson.

“We all know that when someone is trying to teach us something, it’s a tough message.
We resist it and it usually backfires, and children don’t get the message that we’re trying
to convey.”

In spite of that, Goodenough does believe that books can influence children as they
develop their worldview – but the most important element of any book is its story. If
nature and the environment play an important role in a great story the kids will get the
message.

Which brings us back to bedtime at my house with “I Can Save the Earth”. The book
may be preachy, and it is, but it managed to capture my daughter’s imagination. This is
her favorite part.

(sound of reading)

The result? I’ve found toilet paper strewn all over the bathroom three times in the past
two days. The book has certainly had an environmental impact in my house and tonight
we’re gonna read something else.

For The Environment Report, I’m Charity Nebbe.

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Birders’ Passion Helps Scientists

  • Backyard birders across North America are helping scientists track the fate of our feathered friends. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:

Transcript

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through
frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds
as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors
while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:


(sound of footsteps)


Georgina Doe: “There’s five robins right there and there’s three common mergansers,
males…”


Georgina Doe scans the shoreline with her binoculars. Within seconds,
she spots a tiny glimpse of a bird and names it.


She knows them by the way they dive in the air, and the way they thrust
their chests out.


Doe has been scanning the treetops of Carleton Place, Ontario for
more than 30 years. She says she loves the chase and the element of surprise.
And over the years, birding has also been her escape.


She remembers watching a robin build its nest when her grandson
was seriously ill.


“So I used to count the birds every morning before I went off to
the hospital. And then after that, you come back to reality. Somehow a
little bird can just make you feel better.”


Birds have been a part of all of our lives. We might not know their names.
But we can remember holding a baby chick. Or hearing a cardinal on a crisp cold day.


But now, many bird species are dwindling. And scientists are
counting on birders like Georgina Doe to help them find out why.


Doe is one of many birders in North America who collects
information for scientists. Jeff Wells works with that information
at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology.


“There’s no way that we could ever pay the tens of thousands of
trained biologists that would be necessary to gather this kind of
information. It’s only possible when we can engage volunteers like
we do in citizen science projects.”


Cornell runs at least a dozen programs that rely on information
from average birders.


There’s the Christmas Bird Count. About 50 thousand people participate.
Another 50 thousand track species during the Great Backyard Bird
Count in February.


The volunteers reported that wood thrushes are disappearing in
many areas. And they’re tracking the effect of the West Nile Virus
on bird populations.


“If a little bird dies, usually it just disappears quickly
and no one ever sees it. So we don’t really know the impact.
And so looking at the differences in the numbers and distribution
might give us some sense of when the disease was rampant in the summer,
whether it killed off enough birds to make a noticeable
difference in our count.”


(sound of quiet footsteps)


Robert Cermak: “You can see it’s about 10 inches high. It’s all fluffed
up right now so it’s
hard to get a sense of
its mass…”


Birder Robert Cermak tiptoes closer to a barred owl sitting in the
crook of a tree.


We’re in Ottawa, Canada’s capital and a city of about a million
people. When it comes to bird counts, this is Cermak’s territory.


“It’s not often that you actually see a barred owl, any owl, during
the day. They’re usually more secretive. This one is not too
afraid to be out so it’s probably become more accustomed to having people
around it, since this is the center of the city.”


Like Georgina Doe, Cermak has been birding for years. But even with
veterans, there’s always concern about their accuracy. Cermak
discovered this firsthand when he reported seeing a rare
harlequin duck last year.


“I sent it in and a few hours later, someone from Cornell –
very politely because it’s a delicate subject to question
someone’s sighting of a rare bird – but they very delicately
indicated that a harlequin duck is extremely unusual in Ontario and
could I please provide a few extra details.”


Cermak sent them a published account of the sighting. He also
gave them the number of a local expert.


Jeff Wells says researchers check their facts carefully. They look
for reports that don’t match others in the surrounding area. Sometimes
an investigation turns up a trained ornithologist… and sometimes not.
But overall, Wells says the information has formed the basis for
hundreds of published studies.


That’s something that makes birders like Robert Cermak and
Georgina Doe feel proud.


“It’s nice because you’re contributing. You’re doing a
lot of hours, it uses a lot of gas, you go around a lot of blocks doing this
kind of count
but we just think it’s important.”


(sound of Georgina Doe walking)


Georgina Doe says she doesn’t really think of herself as a
scientist.


But she’s out there every day, with her ear to the wind. And that’s
what the scientists are counting on.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

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