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Dovetail Report: September 2004 Tree-Free Paper: When is it Good for the Environment? Dr. Jim Bowyer To request a hardcopy, please call or email for ordering information. The full text of this report is available in Adobe PDF format (292 kb) . Summary From the earliest colonial times to the early part of the twentieth century, 2.1 acres of American forest were converted to agriculture for every person added to the population. Globally, conversion to agricultural uses is still the number one cause of deforestation today. Currently, both hemp and kenaf are being offered as alternatives to wood fiber in the manufacture of paper and similar products. Both of these materials are produced in mono-cultural, annual rotation, agricultural systems referred to as “dedicated crops.” This paper explores the environmental issues surrounding the use of dedicated crops, in comparison to wood, as an industrial raw material. There are two key issues to consider with these materials: net productivity of the land and the direct environmental impacts associated with fiber production. Evidence suggests that the negative environmental impacts of commercial production of hemp and kenaf fiber can be greater than those attributed to the production of wood fiber. In addition, commercial production of these alternate materials potentially increases the land area required for agriculture, a need that is generally met by the conversion of forestland and other natural environments. Introduction It is technically possible to make high quality paper out of almost any kind of fiber. Although virtually all paper in the U.S., as well as most paper worldwide, is made of wood fiber, that has not always been the case. For example paper was invented in China in A.D. 105, but it was not until about 1850 that wood began to be used as a principal raw material for papermaking. Today, about 12 percent of paper worldwide is made of non-wood fiber, primarily wheat straw, bagasse (sugar cane residue) and bamboo. In some circles, paper made of non-wood fiber is viewed as environmentally preferable to paper made of wood, largely because production of such paper does not require the harvesting of trees. This view is the basis for the emergence of “tree-free paper” in printing and writing paper markets. But is tree-free paper really better from an environmental point of view than paper made of wood? It turns out that there are environmental impacts associated with the production of all papermaking raw materials and their subsequent conversion to paper. Systematic analyses of these impacts reveal that environmental impacts associated with production of non-wood fiber vary considerably depending upon the fiber source involved. In some cases, and especially where fiber can be obtained from food crop residues, the use of non-wood fiber is quite attractive from an environmental perspective. In other instances, and particularly those in which fiber is obtained from dedicated fiber crops, the environmental impacts can be quite substantial, and often greater than impacts linked to the periodic harvest of trees. Download the full text of this report. (PDF) Dr. Jim Bowyer is a professor within the University of Minnesota's Department of Bio-based Products (part time) and an Elected Fellow of the International Academy of Wood Science. He is the current Chairman of the Tropical Forest Foundation, Chair of the Minnesota Bio-fiber Council, Scientific Advisor to the Temperate Forest Foundation and Past President of the Forest Products Society (93-94), and of the Society of Wood Science and Technology (87-88). |
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