Should your company go paperless?

No

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by Peter Smith

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Think of the trees! Somebody think of the trees!

Actually, the trees are just fine, thank you very much. Reducing your use of paper doesn't help the environment nearly as much as you might think.

There is reason for us to be concerned about our old-growth forests. These forests are an irreplaceable treasure, having never been logged or mined and therefore are in a 'pristine' state. Not only do large stands of majestic trees live there, but a wide variety of wildlife lives there also, and much of that wildlife depends on the unique environment of the old-growth forest to survive. By all means you should be concerned about the future of these precious forests.

But conserving paper won't help protect them. You see, when a logging firm casts its eyes on an old growth forest like Temagami in Northern Ontario, they are not looking for sources of pulp for paper; rather they are keen to harvest the stands of very old white and red pine trees. These trees take a long time to go but are valuable for making furniture and veneer products, and only the unusable portions of these logs are ever turned into pulp for paper. Frankly the white and red pine logs are too valuable to be used for paper, and because they grow slowly forestry companies don't like to plant them.

So where does the pulp for paper come from? Well, most it is from tree farms. These farms grow row upon row of trees, usually species like jack pine. Jack pine grows very quickly and therefore is good for producing a large quantity of wood quickly, but jack pine is not very good for construction or carpentry. If you've driven around in Northern Ontario you will likely have passed some of these tree farms. You can tell an area is a tree farm and not a forest if all the trees are in neat rows.

Really, then, the raising of these trees is just another type of farming. When the trees are cut down, more are planted. These trees are grown specifically for this purpose and their harvesting is perfectly sustainable. You might as well boycott bread because it comes from wheat. But we all know that wheat doesn't need any protection, and neither do the kinds of trees that are used to make paper. The pulp industry provides many jobs for people in the North, a region that traditionally has a harder time maintaining sustainable employment, and uses land that can't really be used for ordinary farming. There is nothing environmentally wrong with such sustainable land use.

Paper has a number of advantages over electronic media, too. You don't need to protect paper from viruses or hackers, and if you keep your documents in a safe place someone who wants to steal them needs to actually physically break into your premises. Also, believe it or not, if paper is stored properly it lasts longer than data on a CD or hard drive.

There are plenty of things that you can do with your paper to be environmentally conscious:

1. Recycle your waste paper. Paper that is thrown out can go into the garbage, where it ends up taking up space in a landfill, or it can be recycled, where it is used again. Even paper that has already been recycled can be recycled. This means that paper that is thrown out is not really wasted; it becomes useful again.

2. Buy recycled paper. This helps maintain the recycling apparatus. Though your stock of paper doesn't need to be entirely recycled, using recycled paper supports the recycling industry, without which paper just goes into landfills again.

3. Use 'natural' coloured paper. The natural colour of wood (and therefore wood pulp) is a light brown. Paper mills use various kinds of bleach to make paper white. The byproducts of this process end up in our lakes and rivers. 'Natural' colored paper is a light brown colour (like paper bags) because it is unbleached. Using natural coloured paper helps keep these poisons out of our water system.

If you follow these guidelines, your environmentalist conscience need not be troubled about using paper!

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PS: if you are interested in the forestry environmental issue, I recommend that you have a look at Earthroots, an environmental charity dedicated to protecting old-growth forests in Ontario, I worked there for a while and can say that these are deeply committed people.

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