question for you professional loggers

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mga

mga

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driving this morning, i passed a Waste Management truck that had this printed on the side:

"we recycled enough paper products to save 4 million trees"

so, i got to thinking about that. 4 million trees seems like a lot of trees not to be cut.

my question is does recycling have an adverse effect on logging jobs?

or, was that just some b/s they stated?
 
Things made of recycled and the virgin fibers are basically two different product categories. Apples and oranges. As I see it, they're manufacturing brands out of recycled pulp that wouldn't be profitable to make out of the good stuff. Not to mention they usually need to mix fresh pulp into the pot for adding up technical qualities.

So I think it's disinfo. Recycling just allows the industry make more and cheaper products than they could do without it. In reality I think recycling increases the demand of green timber.

Pulp however isn't a good business for the loggers. But that's another story.
 
I think Sam has it right they are using it in a market that would be unprofitable to use new clean pulp.

In terms of acres that would be 8888.9 acres worth of timber. Thats 4 million trees / 450 trees per acre (highly popular planting density in the NW)

In the south it would be less acreage I BELIVE because they are planting at higher densities and the majority of their timber goes toward fiber production.

In terms of harvest that could be equivelent to one companies total yearly harvest off of their tree farm (depending on size of the ownership)

So to come back to your question... it is and isn't a very big number lol
 
I'm not a logger, but I've been in the woods. A paper mill in AZ went to 100% recycling. I guess that requires using less chlorine or some deadly chemical(s)--I don't know much about actual paper making. However, I do know that a big market for the small diameter doghair Ponderosa Pine, which grows like a weed in the higher elevations of AZ was lost. This left only a market for firewood at that time. I think I heard where some other niche markets for the small diameter pine have been developed, but I bet it doesn't take nearly as many stems as the paper mill did.

That paper mill market was a way to thin out the densely packed stands and actually have a private company pay to do so, instead of putting out chipping contracts and paying a private firm to chip it. The doghair burns--as seen in past fires, and it also sucks a lot of water out of the ground. Oldtimers said that creeks used to run all year when the pine was not as dense.

That's my take on how recycling can actually do damage to a forest. Just one example.
 
mga said:
driving this morning, i passed a Waste Management truck that had this printed on the side:

"we recycled enough paper products to save 4 million trees"
Click to expand...

As a side note, WM had that poster on several of their trucks in this area. This is still logging country and they caught a lot of flak for that particular message. :laugh:

The signs lasted about two days and were replaced with something not quite so controversial.
 
Recycled fiber is often cheaper than "virgin" fiber on a per-ton basis, and does indeed require less nasty chemistry to process. Sounds pretty good, right? Well, busting it down to pulp again shortens the fibers, weakening the final product. You can only reliably recycle a given fiber about once before it's too short to be useful. Meanwhile, "saving" trees is a meaningless concept. Trees die due to all kinds of things; logging is only one type of mortality. A doghair patch will naturally thin through a process called "stem exclusion" given enough time. All a healthy pulp market does is accelerate that process. The Biomass market is having a hard time finding its legs, and may never turn out to be profitable. Odds and ends like barkdust and particleboard don't make up much of the industry, either.

In short, "100% Recycling" and other such claptrap are just feel-good marketing lingo for the eco-terrorized guilty yuppie crowd.
 
Gologit said:
As a side note, WM had that poster on several of their trucks in this area. This is still logging country and they caught a lot of flak for that particular message. :laugh:

The signs lasted about two days and were replaced with something not quite so controversial.
Click to expand...

interesting.

unfortunately, around here, people must think that's a big deal, altho misleading.

i was just wondering if actually saving "4 million trees" meant numerous people losing their jobs.
 
"recycling paper" is a feel good marketing scheme. Paper bio-degrades, and trees grow abundantly across the North American Continent. Recycled paper usually takes more energy to produce, and it is usually far less quality than "virgin" paper.
Logging needs a nation wide marketing campaign aimed at educating the fools who think they are saving the world by using plastic over paper.
 
Oldtimer said:
"recycling paper" is a feel good marketing scheme. Paper bio-degrades, and trees grow abundantly across the North American Continent. Recycled paper usually takes more energy to produce, and it is usually far less quality than "virgin" paper.
Logging needs a nation wide marketing campaign aimed at educating the fools who think they are saving the world by using plastic over paper.
Click to expand...



maybe it's a message the producers of "ax men" should be driving to the viewers?
 
"recycling paper" is a feel good marketing scheme.
Click to expand...

Stopped at a Chipotle Grill for the first time this week for lunch. Wasn't bad food...just for $8 for a burrito and chips, I have no desire to ever bother going there again.

But they do have big signs up about their open range/anti-biotics free/whatever meat sources. And a big sign about "Chipotle Recycles! -- Place your plastic basket and glass bottles here!"

Which had me thinking, well that's nice.

Funny thing is, if I grab a grinder at the local pizza shop I wouldn't be eating a burrito wrapped in foil, wrapped in paper, served on a plastic basket lined with paper, with a bag of chips in a paper bag and a bottled drink. I would've been given a plate and a drink in a plastic glass...the only disposables would've been the napkins and a straw.

I'm trying to remember back when A&W was open in town in the 80s; I know the root beer came in the glass mugs. I think if you ate in you also got your burger and fries on one of those cafeteria plastic plates that would be run through the dishwasher. Foil and paper was only for takeout and carhop service.

Gonna make a wild guess that running some dishes through a dishwasher is a lot greener then disposables.

But hey, we recycle!

(My grandfather used to run a paper recycling operation as part of his trucking company until they retired in the late 60s. I don't think they picked up, but folks would drop off paper at his garage where they had a baler and would make a run to the paper factory when they got a truckload. That was back before we even had a town "Sanitary Landfill" and folks had to figure out their own way to dispose of garbage.)
 
This doesn't address the original question, but I don't like this whole "don't use paper....save the earth....save trees" deal. I use as much paper as I can. I use it like its going out of style. This strategy insures that trees will actually be "saved" because land and resources will be devoted to the production of trees themselves.

Maybe someone here remembers an article in a 2004 issue of Evergreen magazine that talks about this sort of thing. The author used tomatoes as a simple analogy. It was said that tomatoes continue to be grown because people buy and use them. If people cease to buy tomatoes then farmers won't continue to grow them. Same with wood and wood derived products.

Our future depends on the increased demand and use of wood products. How the heck are we going to get that word out.

Imagine. Going around saying that you caused the death of 4 million extra trees (and consequently insured 8 million more were planted). This might be tough for the average person to grasp. I hope not.
 

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