Paper - Friend or Foe?

As a consultant, I make an extreme effort to avoid politics & "political correctness". Not only is it bad for business, it also seems to drag one into emotional arguments where there is no winner, only losers. Recently, I encountered an example that passionately called me involving not only my roots, but my current business.

Normally, I only devote one paragraph to my introduction, but today it may be three; please let me apologize in advance. My education is in the pulp & paper business. As a forester, I developed a strong respect for the "multiple use" forest, primarily conservation, some preservation, and treating trees as a renewable resource. My business now caters to printing & the book industries, two giants that have intensively used paper, with trees as the main source.

Recently, Charlie Carr, the Chief Strategist at Mimeo.com wrote an article defending the use of paper & our forests that brought this to a head for me. I had to write my own version of support. So let's just blame Charlie & get at it, OK!?

Without naming names, we've all seen & heard many say, "Save the trees", or "Be environmentally responsible: think before you print", or "Preserve our resources". This may sound good on the surface, but closer examination, as Charlie nicely provides, shows otherwise.

The use of paper has been made to seem evil by some. The facts are, that due to reforestation (seeding and planting trees), forests in the US have actually grown over the whole last century. And it is projected to do so in this one. In commercial forests, where over 95% of our pulp comes from, net annual growth exceeds harvest, AND losses to insects & disease, by 47% each year. Not exactly Armageddon for our trees.

To keep the articles a reasonable length, this topic will be concluded in the next posting.