The attack on the environment by so-called "conservatives" in the US Congress has caused a radical re-thinking throughout the environmental community. People are recognizing that they must stop working alone and must start building alliances. Among other developments, a new coalition has formed between forest activists, energy-conservation advocates, and toxic pollution fighters. Perhaps most importantly, this coalition includes people aiming to create (and retain) good jobs in their communities. Their goal is to cut use of wood in the U.S. by 75% in 10 years. An excellent new report provides the rationale, and describes the plan.
Here's the thinking behind the new coalition.
Lois Gibbs, of Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW)
is spearheading an anti-dioxin campaign. Dioxin is among the 2 or
3 most toxic chemicals ever discovered, and it is produced by
incinerators, by paper mills, by metals smelters, and by the
production of many pesticides. (See Rachel's Environment and
Health Weekly no's 290, 390, 391, 414, and 438.) Now CCHW has
joined with the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) of San Francisco
in a Wood Use Reduction Campaign [1]. The goal is to reduce wood
consumption in the U.S. by 75% within 10 years -- an ambitious
goal, but one that can serve as the "glue" to bring
many environmental groups and economic development groups
together. RAN is in it to save the world's forests. CCHW is in it
to save forests, too, but their main aim is to reduce toxic
dioxin and stupid waste disposal.
For example, as Gibbs points out, paper (which, in the US, is
made almost entirely from wood) is a major fuel for municipal
solid waste incinerators, which are also a major source of toxic
dioxin emissions. If solid waste incinerators were shut down this
act alone would:
* Significantly reduce the nation's serious dioxin problem;
* Stop virgin wood products such as shipping pallets and paper
products from being used mindlessly as fuel in incinerators (half
of all hardwood harvested in the U.S. is for pallets, much of it
discarded after one use);
* Force municipalities to manage wood and paper waste differently
(in other words, reprocess rather than landfill or incinerate
them).
Gibbs said recently, "At Citizens Clearinghouse for
Hazardous Waste, we envision a wood reduction campaign that uses
a collaborative model similar to our McToxics Campaign of 1987
(which successfully forced McDonalds to stop using foam
clamshells for packaging fast food). Thanks to that campaign,
people now look at foam packaging differently. We need to do the
same with the image of paper and wood waste, by informing
Americans about the connections between the destruction of
forests and dioxin." The campaign to reduce wood consumption
by 75% also offers significant opportunities to create new jobs
both in cities and in rural areas.
The destruction of virgin forests is occurring on a massive scale
around the world -- in Indonesia, in Siberia, in British
Columbia, and in Latin America. Worldwide, some 14 million acres
of rainforests disappear each year. In the U.S., 95% of virgin
forests are gone, with only 5% remaining. Forests are home to
most of the world's species and most of the world's indigenous
peoples. Forests provide important free ecological services --
holding water on a grand scale, producing huge quantities of
oxygen, and providing major cooling. (When the forests of
southern Honduras were cut, the average (median) outdoor
temperature rose 13.5 degrees Fahrenheit (7.5 degrees
Celsius).[2] In addition, forests serve human needs directly,
producing game, medicines, fruits, gums, nuts, resins, fiber, and
firewood.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Industrial logging in forests is a major cause of ecological
destruction and the loss of biodiversity. For example, in the US,
some 350,000 miles of logging roads have been cut through forests
--more than 7 times the total length of the U.S. interstate
highway system. Only 10% of the inhabited Earth remains in
roadless condition. The other 90% is chopped up by roads into
segments of less than 8000 acres. This is startling considering
we haven't approached the 100-year anniversary of the automobile.
Logging is a major cause of this disturbance. Only 10% of the
inhabited Earth remains in roadless condition...Logging is a
major cause of this disturbance.
Now environmentalists have determined to save the world's forests
by confronting the major source of forest destruction: the rising
demand for wood, particularly in the industrial world where wood
is wasted on a grand scale. Among industrialized nations, the
most wasteful is the U.S. (France, for example, has per-capita
paper consumption that is 50% of ours.) The U.S. logging industry
expects a 46% increase in logging operations by the year 2040. If
this comes true, U.S. logging in 2040 will equal today's combined
logging by the U.S., Canada and Sweden.
There are two major paths that wood products follow when they
leave the forest. One passes through sawmills, plywood mills,
veneer, or other wood panel mills, and then into the network of
building construction, shipping, manufacturing, and furniture
industries. The other path passes through pulp mills into the
larger system of paper, paperboard, and fiberboard production.
Together, the two paths -- generally building materials and paper
-- account for more than 80% of industrial wood use in the U.S.
(the other 20% includes fuel wood, wood chips, and raw logs for
export).
Thus, a campaign to reduce wood consumption will focus on getting
wood out of buildings, and getting wood out of paper.
This requires 2 basic steps:
(1) Reduce wood in building construction, substituting modern
materials (NOT steel or concrete, which create problems of their
own) and efficient construction techniques. Nearly 90% of all
housing in the U.S. is constructed of wood and the average new
home in the U.S. uses 1600 cubic feet of wood products. Modern
materials and construction techniques can reduce the needed wood
substantially.3
(2) Building codes must be changed to allow construction using
recycled wood (from old barns, for example) and earth materials
(rocks, sand, silt, clay, and even straw bales [discussed
below]). The Uniform Building Code was adopted at a time when
wood supply was considered limitless. The code must be changed.
Two very promising -- and time-tested -- building materials are
adobe (in dry climates), and rammed earth (in any climate); 15%
of the population of France today lives in adobe or rammed earth
buildings. A relatively new construction material is baled straw,
which can be used in any climate. Initially developed at the
University of Arizona (Tucson), straw-bale buildings have now
been built in many states and in Canada. Again, a major obstacle
is the building code. Straw-bale homes are structurally strong,
very energy-efficient, and fire-resistant.
Manuel A. Fernandez, the State Architect of New Mexico recently
wrote, "ASTM [American Society of Testing Materials, in
Philadelphia] tests for fire resistance have proven that a straw
bale infill wall assembly is a far greater fire resistive
assembly than a wood frame wall assembly using the same
finishes." It turns out that straw bales contain enough air
to provide excellent thermal insulation, but not enough air to
support a fast fire. (I have been in a straw-bale house at
Genesis Farm in Blairstown, N.J.; inside, it has the snug feel of
a well-made adobe house. From the outside, it has sharp, modern
lines and an eye-pleasing tan stucco finish. If you didn't know
the walls were baled straw, you wouldn't guess it.-- P.M.) [4]
Getting wood out of paper is, if anything, easier than getting
the wood out of building construction. Today, quality paper is
made from rice and barley straw in China, from sugar cane waste
("bagasse") in Mexico and India, and from the kenaf
plant in Australia. There are 300 mills around the world making
paper without wood.
The most promising wood substitutes for making paper are the
kenaf plant, and straw --the leftover stalks from cereal grain
production. Paper recycling can only carry us so far because the
paper fibers break and become shorter when paper is recycled. To
give recycled paper good qualities, new fibers need to be mixed
in. Those new fibers need not come from wood --leftover stalks
from farmer's fields will work nicely, and so will kenaf. Thus
the city, as supplier of recycled fiber, can coordinate with
rural producers of non-wood fibers, creating jobs and income for
both. (The hemp plant will produce high-quality paper as well.
Kimberly-Clark, a U.S. Fortune 500 company, operates a paper mill
in France producing hemp paper for Bibles and cigarettes. But in
the U.S., growing hemp is a serious federal crime--even hemp with
its narcotic characteristics bred out. This stymies development
of a hemp industry. Walt Disney sells clothing made from hemp,
but not from fiber grown in the U.S.)
Marvelously efficient is the use of agricultural residues to make
paper; it requires no new land brought into production. A
small-scale mill in British Columbia is making paper profitably
from agricultural waste today, and 3 more mills are planned. The
small scale is an advantage because it keeps capital needs low,
making such mills suitable for community-scale economic
development.
In sum, reducing wood use by 75% in 10 years seems doable, and it
puts the environmental community into a new posture: cooperating
across issues, and combining economic development with
environmental protection.
And there is one other big benefit: Reducing the use of wood to
maximize social and environmental benefits will require us to
measure our efforts in new ways. In many different areas (forest
advocacy, pollution prevention, recycling/waste management,
energy conservation, and community development), we will need to
measure our efforts against a long-term vision of where the paper
and wood industries should generally be headed. We will need to
set targets for them, not leaving economic and social decisions
exclusively in the hands of corporations any longer. Finally we
must judge ourselves by our willingness to demand a future that
is more than a minor variation of the status quo. Parts of the
old environmental movement may regard their work in a new light,
when judged by this criterion.
--Peter Montague
Source: Rachel's Environment and Health
Weekly, Environmental Research Foundation P.O. Box 5036,
Annapolis, MD 21403 Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet:
erf@rachel.clark.net Back issues available by E-mail; to get
instructions, send E-mail to INFO@rachel.clark.net with the
single word INFO in the message; back issues also available via
ftp from ftp.std.com/periodicals/rachel and from gopher.std.com.
Permission to repost, reprint or quote is hereby granted.
Subscribe: send E-mail to: rachel-weekly-request@world.std.com
with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message. It's free.
Note for Australian Readers: The Rainforest
Information Centre's Good Wood Guide for NSW to be
released soon, will contain detailed information on ecologically
sound building materials - editor.