Paper Production, Q&A With EarthTalk

December 4, 2019 / activist360 / Leave a comment

You don’t hear much anymore about the cutting of our forests to make paper. Has this destructive practice just moved overseas where we don’t have to confront it, or have increases in recycling in recent years made paper production less destructive?
– J. W., Greenville, SC

It’s true that saving paper (and in turn saving trees) used to be a big discussion topic at home, school and office, but these days you don’t hear much about it. This is likely because paper recycling has become ubiquitous; most of us are now well-versed in how to sort recyclable paper from other “waste.”

According to the American Paper and Forest Association (AF&PA), upwards of two-thirds of all paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling in 2018. What this means is that a lot of the paper we use now gets made with recycled materials that don’t cause more logging and deforestation.

A big player in this march forward has been the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international non-profit that sets standards on forest products and then certifies and labels those that meet the standards as eco-friendly. Another major factor has been the establishment of guidelines set forth and agreed to by 200 governmental and other entities in 2014’s New York Declaration of Forests (NYDP), an international agreement to “end natural forest loss” by 2030.

Despite this progress, deforestation for paper still continues unabated in Indonesia and other parts of the developing world where government oversight is non-existent and profit incentives are too great for illegal loggers to ignore. Some 10 percent of global deforestation (a major driver of climate change) is due to logging for wood products including paper, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

UCS reports that clearing tropical forests and replacing them with mono-cultural plantations of so-called “fastwood” trees like acacia, partly to make virgin paper, accounts for more deforestation across Indonesia than more infamous environmental bogeymen like palm oil production and coal mining. “This is particularly harmful because about a quarter of fastwood plantations were cleared on carbon-rich peat soils,” reports UCS, “adding significantly to global warming pollution.”

*The forests of Indonesia are still falling to feed the world’s demand for paper products. Credit: Tom Fisk, Pexels*

Beyond recycled paper itself, there are some promising alternatives to wood pulp as a feedstock for paper production. Some well-known alt-paper feedstocks include fiber crops like bamboo, kenaf, hemp, flax and jute, agricultural scraps such as sugarcane bagasse, corn husks or straw, and textiles left-over in the production of fabrics and rope. A newer entrant in the green paper alternatives playing field is calcium carbonate—literally rock dust—which is made by pulverizing construction waste and fusing it together with plastic before compressing it with massive rollers into its final paper-thin form.

What about, you might ask, the rapidly-growing digital age we find ourselves in now? Isn’t that saving trees? Yes, but consider the electricity load of all the computers, tablets and phones, as well as the server farms and network switching facilities that keep your e-mail inbox full and your Facebook feed full of new content. They’re largely powered by coal and other fossil fuels. Our addiction to digital information might just be taking a larger toll on the planet than if we still got our information the old-fashioned way—from actual books, magazines, newspapers and printed reports.

CONTACTS: AF&PA; UCS; FSC; New York Declaration of Forests.

EarthTalk® is produced by Roddy Scheer & Doug Moss for the 501(c)3 nonprofit EarthTalk. Send questions to: question@earthtalk.org.

Oceanographer John Englander Discusses Sea-Level Rise

December 3, 2019 / activist360 / Leave a comment

John Englander is an oceanographer, consultant, and leading expert on sea-level rise. His broad marine science background, explorations to Greenland and Antarctica, and research provide him the ability to see the big picture of sea-level rise and its societal impacts.

In this clip, John points out that various tipping points appear to be cascading. Some examples he cites include the Arctic sea ice melting quicker. It is responsible for changing weather patterns and could be involved with slowing down the ocean currents.

He points out that the number of people that are vulnerable to flooding as sea-level rises is difficult to define. If sea-level becomes one meter higher or one point one meters higher, the extra 10 centimeters is hard to extrapolate or project onto how many homes would flood. Today, satellite images provide a more accurate picture of the height of the terrain the topography. In prior years, tree canopy looked like land and flooding projections were more conservative. Now, artificial intelligence and machine learning, help us decipher the actual land height and acknowledge that more people are vulnerable to flooding.

He points out that even if we could somehow magically stop all carbon dioxide emissions, we would still have the effects of the heat already stored in the atmosphere. All the strange weather patterns, the fires, and droughts, will not go away immediately even if we could reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero. Therefore, we have to be more resilient to these extreme weather events.

John works with businesses, governmental agencies and communities to understand the risks of increased flooding due to rising seas, extreme tides, and severe storms, advocating for “intelligent adaptation”.

Microorganisms Bring Eco-Friendly Color To Fashion

December 2, 2019 / activist360 / Leave a comment

More and more these days we’re being urged to go green – to use ethically-sourced products, recycle more and try to reduce our carbon footprint. That awareness has even spread to the fashion industry.

Colorifix, a British biotech startup, uses a synthetic biology approach to produce, deposit, and fix pigments onto textiles. The method of textile dyeing taps into the bright colors of birds and butterflies and has micro-organisms recreate them on fabric, slashing the use of water and heavy chemicals in the process,

“We’re harnessing the ability of microbes, in this case, to be able to deposit and fix a pigment on to fabric.”
–Colorifix Chief Scientific Officer Jim Ajioka

Dyeing with synthetic pigments uses large concentrations of hazardous chemicals such as chromium and heavy metal salts. It also consumes vast amounts of energy and water.

In contrast, Colorifix says its method uses no hazardous chemicals and cuts water use by up to 90% depending on equipment, pigment, and fabric.

Apparel is one of the top-polluting industries. Consumers are increasingly demanding sustainable products and pushing image-conscious retailers to address the environmental impact of their clothes’ full life cycle. The dyeing stage has one of the biggest.

Colorifix expects to launch commercially its 5-ml batches of microbes bulging with color in 2020. Challenges include creating new hues on-demand, maintaining standards of current processes, and keeping costs down.

Colorifix’s backers include H&M, Swiss investment firm Challenger 88, and Cambridge University.

You don’t hear much anymore about the cutting of our forests to make paper. Has this destructive practice just moved overseas where we don’t have to confront it, or have increases in recycling in recent years made paper production less destructive? – J. W., Greenville, SC

You don’t hear much anymore about the cutting of our forests to make paper. Has this destructive practice just moved overseas where we don’t have to confront it, or have increases in recycling in recent years made paper production less destructive?
– J. W., Greenville, SC