Paper, Printing & The Environment
Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere is one of the major causes of global warming and we contribute to it in just about everything we do.
Trees have evolved over millions of years to become incredibly efficient and powerful at withdrawing carbon from the atmosphere. They absorb carbon dioxide through tiny pores in their leaves and store it in their wood, bark, leaves and soil. Trees also help to combat salinity, reduce soil erosion, provide windbreaks, clean underground water systems and provide habitat for wildlife.
Recent World-first research by the Australian National University, contained in their Green Carbon Report, has revealed that unlogged native forests store three times more carbon then previously thought. According to The Wilderness Society, this research confirms that Australia has some of the most carbon dense forests on Earth – and that logging and clearing them has significant climate implications.
Logging also releases carbon in the atmosphere. ANU research shows that the logging each hectare of the giant Eucalyptus regnans forests in Tasmania and Victoria releases over 1,000 tonnes of greenhouse pollution.
Only a small portion of the carbon removed from logged forests ends up as durable goods and buildings, which retain absorbed carbon for thousands of years. Australia also exports unprocessed wood chips, wood waste and sawdust. The remainder ends up as pulp and paper.
According to The Wilderness Society, the logging industry has been misleading the public by claiming that logging is good for climate change because young re-growth forests suck up more carbon than old growth forests. What the logging industry conveniently ignores is the massive carbon loss that occurs when the original forest is logged.
Additionally, precious water supplies are lost through the logging of water catchments. The Victorian government allows the logging of five of Melbourne’s water catchments which supply over half the city’s water. Logging in water catchments reduces both the quality and quantity of water coming from the catchments.
Worldwide, the pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy, accounting for 4 percent of all the world's energy use. The pulp and paper industry uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry.
Pulp is also used to make packaging, facial and toilet tissue, nappies, paper napkins, paper towels, tampons and sanitary products.
Overseas, biofuel plants are being co-located with pulp and paper mills, with the waste converted to syngas and used to generate heat and power. This provides a potential opportunity for the pulp and paper industry to produce energy and chemicals from biomass and biofuels, including for its own use. According to the Pulp & Paper Industry Strategy group, "in order to achieve leading-edge production processes, the industry would need to undertake considerably more R&D than is undertaken at present."
Where is paper made in Australia?
Australian Paper is the Australian division of the Japanese paper giant Nippon Paper. Australian Paper produce office and printing paper at Maryvale VIC, Shoalhaven Heads NSW and Burnie & Wesley Vale in Tasmania.
Located 150KM east of Melbourne in the heart of Gippsland, Australian Paper's Maryvale mill is the largest pulp and paper-making complex in Australia. Maryvale has three pulp mills, five paper-making machines and a waste paper processing plant with a combined capacity of approximately 585,000 tons/per year.
Maryvale’s pulp mills produce unbleached softwood pulp, hardwood pulp and bleached eucalypt kraft pulp. This pulp is then turned into paper products, from corrugated cardboard and thick paper sacks, to photocopying and writing paper. The vast majority of the A4-sized paper made in Australia and New Zealand is made at Maryvale Mill, including popular brands like REFLEX and Australian Pure White.
Australian Paper utilise sawmill residue and native forest harvesting residual timber for 80% of its eucalyptus (hardwood) pulpwood supply. The remainder is sourced from company plantations, grown specifically for timber harvesting and imported pulp. Maryvale Mill’s total consumption of wood and other logs is around 1.8 million m3 per year.
Australian Paper Plantations manages 37,000 hectares of softwood (pine) plantations and 17,000 hectares of hardwood (eucalyptus) plantations in the Gippsland region that feed the Maryvale mill.
Amcor - produce packaging & industrial paper at Botany NSW, Fairfield VIC & Petrie QLD;
Norske Skog Australasia - produce pulp & newsprint paper at Albury NSW & Boyer TAS;
Visy - produce packaging & industrial paper at Tumut NSW (also pulp), Gibson Island QLD, Smithfield NSW, Reservoir VIC & Coolaroo VIC.
While some sites are pulp and paper mills, some carry out paper manufacturing from recycled imported fibre, and others only convert imported product.
Where do the trees to make Australian paper come from?
According to Australian Paper Watch, fibre for photocopy paper is sourced primarily from native forest eucalypts in the Central Highlands & Gippsland region in Victoria.
From Victoria, woodchips are turned into copy paper or exported to Japan, to be made into low grade paper products. Logged areas are often cleared by burning.
Victoria is blessed with the most diverse range of habitats of any state. Their forests are home to the tallest trees and biggest carbon stores on Earth. But as Australia’s most cleared state, the challenge in Victoria to protect nature is urgent. According to The Wilderness Society, Victoria is facing an extinction crisis, with 44% of their native plants and 30% of their wildlife extinct or threatened.
Tasmania is home to the tallest hardwood forests on Earth - with trees reaching nearly 100 metres, and housing spectacular biodiversity. It is also home to some of Australia’s most voracious logging, with an average of 8,000 hectares of native forest are clearfelled and burnt each year.
The biggest native-forest logging company in Australia and the biggest hardwood-chip company in the world receives the overwhelming majority of logs destined for sawmills and woodchip mills from Tasmania. According to the The Wilderness Society, Gunns Ltd continue to cause destruction of Tasmania’s old growth forests, a vital habitat for the Tasmanian Wedge-tailed Eagle and other endangered species, and more than 200,000 hectares still face destruction. The Wilderness Society and other conservation groups are actively campaigning against this destruction and have proposed extensions to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
Clearfelling is the removal of all trees from an area with the remainder of the plants destroyed by burning. The forestry industry claims clearfelling is done to ‘mimic nature’ by producing seed regeneration however there is much scientific evidence that this is not the case. In a naturally occuring bushfire, many trees remain protected by their bark or plant tissue that can quickly send out new growth in the event of physical damage to a tree. Forest burning also releases dangerous greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, further adding to global warming.
Another result of clearfelling is soil compaction which affects the ability of plants to regenerate and the ability of the soil to capture and hold moisture. Subsoil is brought to which can change the chemistry of soil and in some instance may even lead to the soil becoming toxic.
Australian National University biologist David Lindenmayer has spent almost 20 years studying the ecology of Victoria's mountain ash forests. He says wildfires leave a centuries-old biological and structural legacy. Clear-felling, on the other hand, removes almost all vegetation, so that a quite different, botanically simplified and even-aged forest grows back. Lindenmayer says clear-felling leaves too few trees to sustain species relying on hollows. Victoria's endangered faunal emblem, the Leadbeaters possum, for example, suffers because it needs multiaged forests where short-lived, fire-loving forage trees stand under a canopy of old, hollow-bearing giants that have survived a series of mild and moderate blazes over the centuries. He says logging should be varied according to natural landscape variations. He says other countries such as Sweden are adjusting methods to resemble local patterns of natural disturbance. This means, for example, that a patch with little natural fire history would never be logged. ''We are behind the world in best practice and we have some work to do to catch up now," he says. Source: Claire Miller in The Age, 13 May 2002
Forests Are Water Catchments
According to Friends of the Earth spokesperson, Cam Walker, every year for the past 20 years, about three square kilometres of Melbourne’s water catchments have been clearfell logged. About seven out of every ten trees cut down are sent off to the Australian Paper pulp mill to be woodchipped and made into paper products.”
“Melbourne has already lost a huge amount of water because of logging. Stopping logging today would mean we can begin to reclaim lost water. In 40 years we would have an extra 16 gigalitres of water every year, that’s enough water for a city of at least 100,000 people. A logging ban today would help offset water yield losses that that are now expected as a recent of recent bushfires”
Stop Press - New Pulp Mill To Destroy Tasmanian Native Forests: Tasmanian woodchipping giant Gunns Ltd is still planning to build a massive chemical pulp mill in northern Tasmania. This forest-hungry pulp mill will be a disaster for our climate, wildlife and future. It will also dump thousands of tonnes of poisonous effluent into Bass Strait every day, threatening marine life, tourism and the fishing industry. Please go to the Wilderness Society Website to find out more about this blatant exploitation of our environment, and what you can do to help.
Imported Pulp Potentially From llegal Logging
According to A3P (Australasian Plantation Products & Paper Industry Council), imports from Indonesia represent some 8.5% of Australia’s wood and paper products.
It is estimated that Indonesia has lost almost a quarter of its forest area since 1990 and continues to experience a deforestation rate of close to 2% annually. A recent study prepared for the American Forest and Paper Association (Wood for Paper: Fiber Sourcing in the Global Pulp and Paper Industry) indicates that 20% of the wood fibre used by the pulp industry in Indonesia is potentially of suspicious origin.
A World Bank study estimates that the deforestation rate in Indonesia is higher than it has ever been at 2 million ha/year, representing an annual loss of forest equivalent in area to the size of Belguim.
According to the World Wildlife Fund every year an estimated $400 million worth of illegally logged forest products are sold in Australia from places such as Sumatra, Borneo and New Guinea.
How much paper do we use?
According to the Pulp & Paper Industry Strategy group, Australians consume around four million tonnes of paper and paperboard each year — an amount equal to nearly 200 kg per person. Per capita consumption of paper is high and increasing, and Australian paper output has increased, in quantity terms, at around 2.4 per cent a year between 1996 and 2006. It is estimated that between 10 and 17 trees are needed to produce 1 tonne of paper - and this is only enough for around 7,000 copies of a national newspaper!
World paper consumption reached 366 million tonnes in 2005 and is rising steadily at
an annual rate of 3.6 per cent. The US and European Union consume the most paper
per capita. However, global consumption growth is primarily due to solid demand
from China and India. Chinese pulp imports have increased by 27.2 per cent in the first four months of 2008, compared with the same period in 2007, according to the Chinese Customs Bureau. China has around 7,000 paper machines in operation but lacks a large domestic supply of pulp and needs to import most of its raw materials and pulp from other countries, including Australia.
Pollution
in the Manufacturing Process
Traditionally, paper is made white by toxic chlorine bleaching that has a negative impact on rivers, lakes, oceans and our health. Chlorine is used in a number of different forms: as elemental chlorine gas, chlorine dioxide or sodium hypochlorite. All result in the discharge of toxic organochlorine by-products. According to Greenpeace, organochlorines from pulp mills have been found in water, sediment and food chain as far as 1400 kilometres from their source.
Chlorine
dioxide results in the production of persistent organic pollutants
(POPs) such as dioxins and furans. POPs can cause nervous system
damage, diseases of the immune system, reproductive and developmental disorders,
and cancers in humans and other animals.
Dioxin is not easily broken down, and as a result ends up in
soil, water, and on plant surfaces. From there it enters the food chain and
the fats of fish, meat and into dairy products. Dioxins have been identified
in products such as tissues, tampons, disposable nappies, coffee filters and
bleached milk cartons & cigarette papers. Choosing paper products that are
unbleached and processed chlorine free as well as avoiding meat & animal
products are the best way to avoid dioxin consumption.
Alternatives
to Chlorine Bleaching
Technologies are now widespread which enable complete elimination of chlorine
gas from chemical pulp bleaching processes. The most established of the new
technologies, with some 40% of the world bleached chemical pulp market, is Elemental
Chlorine Free (ECF) bleaching. ECF bleaching avoids use of chlorine
gas by substituting chlorine dioxide as the main bleaching agent, often preceded
by oxygen delignification. Effluents contain less total organochlorines and
are less toxic than those produced by chlorine gas - but can still cause damaging
effects.
Totally Chlorine Free (TCF) bleaching -the best for the environment
as this process uses neither chlorine nor chlorine compounds and relies solely
on peroxide, ozone and oxygen to achieve satisfactory whiteness. TCF bleaching
is technically more difficult and, until recently at least, more expensive to
retrofit on existing mills.
Air Emissions
Gaseous emissions of concern include hydrogen sulphide, oxides of sulphur, oxides of nitrogen and ‘dust’. Volatile organic compounds which can act as precursors in the formation of low altitude ozone, a component of smog which can have a serious effect on human health. In the US the pulp and paper industry is included in a category of ‘major sources of hazardous air pollutants’ because of the known presence of volatile organic compounds, chlorine, chloroform and hazardous metallic air pollutants in pulp mill emissions.
Uncoated vs clay-coated paperClay coated paper is generally much shinier than uncoated paper, and is often chosen for its glossy look. However, during the recycling process the clay coating is removed and is generally disposed of as waste, which reduces the amount of useful fibre per tonne recovered from recycling paper by approximately one third.
Eco
Labelling
An eco label is an independent certification that ensures important key impacts
are minimised for a product. Blue Angel - Germany; Nordic Swan - Denmark; and
the Green Seal - USA). Most eco-labels are part of the Global Ecolabelling Network
(GEN). Wherever possible select a paper that has one of these labels.
There are also environmental management schemes such as the Eco-Management and
Audit Scheme (EMAS) and International Organisation for Standards 14001 (ISO)
environmental management system.
The composition of the traditional offset printing inks varies widely. Mineral oil based inks contain hazardous substances such as petroleum hydrocarbons which release volatile organic compounds (VOC's) when drying, causing air pollution. Cadmium, mercury, chromium (which are hazardous heavy metals used in pigments for colouring); or solvents are also used as a carrier or to aid in drying. The use of mineral oil based inks also means that solvents are required to clean the printing press after use - resulting in more VOC's being released into the atmosphere.
Vegetable based inks are manufactured from a renewable resource, such as soy or linseed oil. They are comparable in price and performance to high quality mineral oil based inks, and are therefore in much wider use in recent times.
Vegetable based ink reduces the amount volatile organic compounds released into the atmosphere during printing. Plate cleaning is able to be done without solvents, using a water based cleaner. Vegetable based ink does not contain hazardous heavy metals, and creates a healthier workplace for printing staff.
Printing with vegetable based inks means that this paper is also easier to recyle, and less toxic residue is emmitted as waste.
Digital Printing
Digital printing should be considered as a more sustainable (and cheaper) alternative for small print runs. Although there is no vegetable based ink product available to digital printers, the process is more energy efficient for small scale printing. According to Steve Kounnas at Digital Print Australia, digital print runs waste only about 5 test sheets of paper setting up a run whereas offset printers waste about 500 sheets per run! They have just introduced a new kind of printing machine which is made from 97% recyclable material & the ink cartridges can also be refilled.
Recycled Paper
Paper recycling is the process of recovering waste paper and remaking it into new paper products. There are three categories of paper that can be used as feedstocks for making recycled paper:
Mill broke is paper trimmings and other paper scrap from the manufacture of paper. Pre-consumer waste is obtained from printers offcuts and run errors, so it has never been used by consumers, and may contain virgin fibre. Post-consumer waste is made up of material that has been previously used by consumers.
Paper is recycled by mixing it with water to break it down into cellulose fibers again. Post-consumer waste must be de-inked before being recycled. Recycled pulp is commonly blended with a portion of virgin fibre to improve paper quality.
Recycled pulp is more energy efficient than virgin mechanical or chemical pulping processes. Assessments by US organisation Environmental Defence reveal the facts when it comes to recycled paper versus virgin fibre paper:
Recycled paper uses 36% less energy consumption, 44% fewer greenhouse gases, produces 38% less waste paper and outputs 82% less solid waste than virgin fibre paper.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found that recycling causes 35% less water pollution and 74% less air pollution than making virgin paper.
Papers labelled ‘recycled’ often contain both pre and post consumer waste content. To be sure you're not using virgin fibre paper, it is best to choose paper products with the highest post consumer waste content available.
Beware of Greenwashing!
Many products are now being labelled as 'green' even though they still have negative environmental impacts on the environment. The same goes for paper. All paper is recyclable, so paper labelled 'recyclable' is not necessarily green. True green paper should be 100% recycled, have a high post-consumer waste content and not contain any native forest fibre.
Some paper companies are labelling their paper 'carbon neutral' as the carbon emmissions in the production process have been measured and offset. But their paper may still contain native forest fibre, and simply leaving the native forest in the ground to absorb carbon would be much more helpful to our environment!
Cutting down carbon-absorbing native forests can never be justified by carbon offsetting.
go greenwash with ENVI This article reveals Australia's first carbon neutral paper includes includes pulp from Australia's native forests, including the worlds most carbon dense forests and water catchments. http://www.bindarri.com.au/envi-carbon-neutral-paper/
Which papers are better for the environment?
Office Stationery: (I wish this list was a longer one!)
Ecocern is an Australian owned company who are very passionate about supplying environmentally friendly paper. They stock a wide range of 100% post-consumer waste products such as envelopes and packaging supplies. They also sell their own brand of Australian made, unbleached, 100% post-consumer recycled paper (brown) and stock Evolve office paper.
Evolve Business, Everyday and Blue Angel all contain 100% 'genuine recovered waste', which the manufacturer M-Real claim consists of paper waste recovered from offices and printers and does not include mill offcuts.
Officeworks 'Recycled' High White Paper is labelled as containing 100% post-consumer fibre and EMAS, Nordic Ecolabel and Blue Angel accreditations. Made in Europe and endorsed by Greenpeace (Germany.)
Commercial Papers:
Resa Offset/Cyclus Offset 100% post consumer waste, process chlorine free, production waste & water is recycled and holds numerous Eco-Labels as well as EMAS and ISO 14001 accreditation. Produced by DalumPapir, one of the most environmentally proactive paper manufacturers in the world.
DalumPapir's environmental initiatives are based on a policy of addressing the entire life cycle of a product. Waste water used in production is recycled and returned to its source cleaner than it arrived. Waste generated from the recycling process is used to create other products such as fertiliser, cement and energy. Available in Australia from CPI Papers.
EcoStar 100% post-consumer recycled uncoated stock, processed chlorine free. The entire manufacturing process and transportation to the paper supplier is carbon neutral. Source of recycled fibre is close to mill to reduce transportation. Made in France at an ISO 14001 certified mill and available from Raleigh Paper.
Options Recycled PC 100 100% post consumer waste, made using energy using wind power, is process chlorine free, made carbon neutral and the first recycled paper to be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and the Rainforest Alliance's Smartwood Program. Available in Australia from Raleigh Paper.
Envirocare 100% recycled printing paper containing 65% post consumer waste and 35% pre consumer waste. Manufactured in Austria by Lenzig Paper, it holds several environmental accreditations and is Elemental Chlorine Free. Available from KW Doggett in Australia.
Enviroboard 100% post consumer waste. Not photocopy paper. Made in Australia by Visy, used mainly by printers. Comes in off-white and brown. Also sold as Botany Brown. Available in a variety of weights. Available from Premier Paper & Raleigh Paper.
Tree Free Papers:
Kenaf Kenaf belongs to the same plant family as cotton. It is an annual crop which is normally grown over the wet or summer season and is harvested for fibre soon after it commences to flower. Under good conditions kenaf will grow to a height of 5 to 6 metres in 6 to 8 months and produce up to 30 tonnes per hectare of dry stem material. Kenaf has been shown to be well adapted to production in northern Australia and can be grown on a wide range of soil types. It is tolerant of drought and relatively free from pests and diseases.
Though currently one of the worlds biggest consumers of wood-fibre papers, the Japanese pulp and paper industry is keen to increase its usage of non-wood fibres and has indicated that kenaf is the preferred feedstock. Currently, Japanese importers are experiencing serious difficulties in securing supplies of kenaf. This opens up an exciting opportunity for Australia to establish and develop this new exciting opportunity. According to the New Crops Newsletter, Ausfibres Pty Ltd is a company established to commercialise the Australian production of non-wood fibre crops, particularly kenaf, for the manufacture of pulp and paper, and other end uses. A proposal for a Kenaf paper mill in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, shows estimates that the workforce would be 300-strong, with an additional 180 ancillary jobs created to supply goods and services.
Hemp From 75 to 90% of all paper in the world was made with cannabis fibre until the 1880s. These included books, Bibles, maps, paper money, stocks and bonds, and newspapers. Hemp can also be used as an additive to strengthen and improve quality in wood and straw-based paper manufacture. The main reason industrial hemp use has dwinled is because it became illegal to cultivate in some countries, even though the level of THC is too low in industrial hemp to cause any psychotropic effects. Powerful lobbies by the wood-pulp mills didn't help hemp's cause, especially in Australia, as they had large amounts of forests already at their disposal.
According to the website of Western Australian Company Hemp Resources Ltd, they intend to produce 100% hemp paper and hemp blend paper in Western Australia as soon as commercial growing areas are realised and the company’s paper mills constructed.
Seeded paper - Seed embedded paper containing seeds of Australian native trees and shrubs (typically Bottlebrush) - 100% recycled (apart from the seeds!) It’s ideal for promotions, fliers, invitations, Christmas cards. read it... plant it... watch it grow. Paper-Go-Round is Australia's source of Seeded paper.
Sugar Cane - Harvest Recycled paper is manufactured using 60% sugar cane fibre and chlorine
free bleaching, but also contains pulp from sustainable afforestation. The sugar
cane (bagasse – the material remaining after sugar has been extracted)
fibre is sourced from the immediate vicinity of the mill – requires minimum
transportation. All pulp used is bleached using an Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF)
process.
The wood fibre used in Harvest Recycled is sourced from internationally certified
Well Managed Forests and accredited through independent third party Chain of
Custody (CoC) certification. Available
in Australia from Raleigh
Paper.
Wheat Straw Wheat straw is being used to make paper products in the rural Western Australian town of Moora. The founder of River House, a small WA company, claims that a wood pulp mill costs five times as much as a straw pulp plant and uses 10 times as much energy. Furthermore, it takes 5 tonnes of wood to make one tonne of pulp, but only 1.5 tonnes of straw pulp. River House's new wheat straw pulp mill is set to produce five percent of our locally-made cardboard boxes.
Cereal Paper Temora NSW farmer-environmentalist Ian Thompson has begun a small business making paper from either cereal straw or pin rushes. Ian reduces the grasses to a pulp and presses them into paper to produce quality business cards and wedding invites.
Banana Paper The Costa Rica Natural Paper Company with its partner the major central American paper manufacturer The Simam Group, has formed the Costa Rica Natural Paper Company, which produces 100 percent recycled paper made from 95% post-consumer paper fibre and 5% banana stalks. College students grow, harvest and process the banana stalks. The end products include recycled staionery, notepads, journals, cards, boxes, art supplies and envelopes. There is no residual banana smell, but the texture is smooth and appearance very attractive. The high quality office papers can be used in printers and copiers. - E Magazine, Feb '97. Papyrus Australia has also begun making banana paper.
Poo Paper There are a number of small manufactures of 'poo' paper throughout the world. In Tasmania you can currently buy paper made from Kangaroo poo. Approximately 25kg of kangaroo manure makes 400 sheets of paper, which is becoming a souveneer of choice for tourists. In Scandinavia, elk poo paper is the stationery of choice in most offices, and elephant poo paper, manufactured from 75% post consumer waste and 25% elephant dung is collected by the elephant handlers in Sri Lanka and provides an extra source of income for the locals to care for the elephants. "Ellie Poo" paper is available from the Green Stationery Co in the UK.
Beer Paper Manufactured using hops, malt, yeast and beer labels. 40% to 60% beer labels, 5% to 20% beer fibres, 30% to 50% TCF pulp. A strong paper with a speckled finish. "Bier Paper" is available from the Green Stationery Co in the UK.
Bamboo Paper: Bamboo has been cited as a ‘green’ alternative to virgin wood fiber. But according to Aaron G. Lehmer of ReThink Paper, industrial use of tropical bamboo, combined with an escalating global paper demand, threatens what remains of the world’s last intact bamboo forests. Machines already in use to process wood pulp into paper can also be used to process bamboo fibre, thereby discouraging paper companies to convert their machines to process more sustainable alternative fibre sources.
Many thanks to the following sources of information:
The Environmental Paper Network
I have here, by cross referencing as many sources as possible, attempted to provide a brief overview of the paper industry in Australia from information currently publicly available.
Although I can take no personal responsibility for any information I have obtained from outside sources which may be incorrect, I would very much appreciate being informed if any of the info needs updating and/or correcting. I will do my best to update with new info as it comes to hand.
By staying informed, we can make a big difference to the impact on our environment.
Heide
Heide Hackworth, Creative Director
I welcome your suggestions or comments for this page. Please email me at info@earthgreetings.com.au
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