Natures Filaments

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Chapter 9

• Natures Filaments

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Fibers .. the longish, tough, flexible filaments
that connect nature to itself and to human
life.Biologist Peter Warshall
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Sources of Fiber

• Forests
• Plants
• Livestock
• Oceans tidal zones
• Petrochemical fibers - now competing with most
  other fibers, except paper some building
  materials

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Most natural fibers grown in unsustainable ways

• Intensive chemical-based, soil depleting,
  subsidized cotton-growing is still widespread
• Sustainable ways of growing wool, flax, hemp
  (strongest) even cotton are familiar
  practical
• Sustainable harvesting forest management
  practices are known commercially viable, but
  not widely practiced

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Paper Industry

• Most Western paper mills are gigantic large-scale
  operations
• Often use as much energy and water as a small
  city
• Use equivalent of 75 acres of clear-cut forest
  per day
• Logs are chipped, boiled in acid to make pulp
• Paper machines larger than a house
• Forms web of fibers that thunder through
  high-velocity steam-heated dryers onto shipping
  rolls
• Paper universally available in our culture
• priced at a penny per sheet
• Rarely paid for or thought about by its users

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Paper Waste

• Most paper used for the short term then
  discarded
• About 1/10th used for long-term storage
• Average U.S. office worker estimated to use a
  sheet every 12 minutes dispose of 100-200 lbs.
  of paper per year
• 70 of typical office waste from the paper
  chase
• In 70s 80s, discarded office paper grew by 150

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Substitute Bytes Brainsfor Paper

• Redesign business around people, not paper
• Eliminate nega-information
• Use electronic communications business
  transactions
• Conduct research electronically
• Move to web-based businesses

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One Aspect Packaging

• German retailer found 98 of secondary packaging
  simply unnecessary
• Much is over-designed for marketing purposes
• An unwanted or despised service - that if
  avoided would in turn avoid the entire chain of
  compounding losses all the way back to the forest

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Practices using less paper, and more efficiently

• Dont print out e-mail
• Preview documents before printing
• Edit with groupware
• Print double-sided automatically
• Use two-way returnable envelopes

• Store data electronically
• Reuse to back side of once-used paper
• recycle
• Use lighter-basis-weight paper

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Material Innovations

• Engineered wood products have 1.8 - 2.4x yield
  per unit of fiber versus lumber (but with more
  energy chemical inputs)
• Weighs less, stiffer, free from knots
• Requires much less wood to build houses
• Fingerjointing of scrap waste wood
• Honeycomb panels of cardboard or agricultural
  fibers for homes, furniture

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Wooden Shipping Pallets

• Uses 11 of total lumber 2/5 of hardwood cut in
  U.S.
• 1.5 billion exist, 6 per American, 400 million
  made every year
• Seldom mended, usually discarded
• Companies are eliminating pallets or using rugged
  easily recycled ones made of waste plastic
• Discarded pallets becoming raw material for
  community-based manufacturing

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Paper Recycling

• Markets are growing and stabilizing
• Probably over 50 of fiber inputs to U.S.
  papermaking
• Industry moving to regional recycle mini-mills

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Old Growth Forests Beyond Fiber

• Support indigenous people, fish wildlife
• Protect biodiversity
• Hold water
• Provide recreation, beauty, spiritual renewal
• Clean the air
• Sequester enough carbon to offset 1/4 of global
  CO2 emissions
• Functions many times more valuable than the
  commodity value of wood fiber

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Authors Summary

• efficiency and substitution throughout the
  value chain of forest products can displace most
  or all cutting of natural forests - freeing them
  for more valuable roles - while providing the
  same or better service.