Paper and the Environment
Monday, June 1, 2015 at 9:25PM By David Dawson
There have been quite a few articles recently in this column and on the SETI website about waste. This is another but with a slightly different angle though whether the Editor will print it remains to be seen. He’s very kind so he probably will.
As everyone knows these days, burning fossil fuels (from oil, gas or coal) results in global warming emissions that in turn affect the climate and weather patterns.
Consider paper. It is everywhere. Probably 90% is used once and thrown away, and we don’t think about it anymore. Recycling may ease our conscience, but what is the true cost? Huge machines (burning diesel fuel) cut down the trees. Trucks (burning diesel fuel) haul the trees to a paper mill. Enormous amounts of energy are used to smash up the wood, turning it first into pulp and then into paper. More trucks (burning diesel fuel) bring the paper to a printing factory where huge amounts of energy are used to turn that paper into things such as advertising flyers, magazines or newspapers. Of course manufacture of the printing machines themselves and the inks also used lots of energy to produce.
After the newspaper is printed it is trucked (burning more diesel fuel) to various points for distribution, or even delivered door-to-door.
Huge amounts of time and effort are put into producing the articles, the reporting, the advertising and other features such as the crossword or comic strips.
What happens next? You receive your newspaper, spend about half an hour reading the bits you find interesting and then you throw it away. All that energy, all those global warming emissions, all that effort, all that forest cut down for thirty minutes of reading. And many flyers end up going straight into the garbage without even being opened. This is crazy.
All across the world the battle is on between the traditional newspapers versus getting news on-line, via TV or by radio. From the environmental point of view obviously on-line is favourite by far, but from an economic point of view, how many jobs would be lost in forestry, papermaking, transport and printing if newspapers were to go the way of the Dodo.
Paper kitchen towels are another total waste of resources. People previously used cloth towels and washed them regularly. Toilet paper is another extravagantly used product though hard to replace in our modern society. Paper plates: paper napkins: all total waste of resources, but jobs for some. It would be an interesting challenge for families to attempt, say for one month, to use half of the usual amount of kitchen towels, and if you are really up for a challenge half the toilet paper too.
Sorting out this sort of environment versus jobs conundrum is of course what politicians of all parties, whether Federal, Provincial or municipal, are paid to do, but are they up to the task? Are they showing leadership in this area? So far it is not noticeable.
Reader Comments (1)
The amount of paper waste that we generate is very disturbing to me. It has been for a long time. Your column draws a much wider circle around this issue, by drawing attention to the immensity of the transport of all that paper. It has spawned a response in my brain:
On many of the Hawaiian islands plastic bags were a huge problem. They banned them. That's it. They banned them.
Here in North America that seems unthinkable. Yet the Hawaiians made that leap of judgement and did it.
We, the citizens of Southeast Manitoba, could do the same thing. Address the issue of the huge waste and environmental impact of excessive plastic and paper use .
Flyers are, to me, an obvious place to start. Most of us do not even look at the flyers that land in our post boxes. They are repetitive, all too frequent, and we are not allowed any choice in whether or not we receive them. Why should advertisers have the right to shower us with all this? Let us limit this avalanche of paper and all of the associated costs.
Similarly with plastic bags. Years ago I travelled to England. I went shopping for food of course. Each time I got through the till I would discover that I needed bags, because they did not supply them. What a problem! And I kept forgetting! But the whole country was accustomed to bringing their bags (cloth ) with them, so it was not a problem for them at all.
So, I take your article as a call to arms! Let's do it. Take matters into our own hands and do something about these problems at least in our own back yard.