RISI INFO, Inc. Blog

What exactly is environmentally preferable paper?

2012-05-14T08:54:58-04:00

To understand why selecting environmentally preferable paper is so challenging for publishers and other print buyers, consider these three recent news items:

1. National Geographic Society worked with Hearst Enterprises and Verso Paper to help mostly small land owners achieve Sustainable Forestry Initiative certification for well over 1 million acres of Maine forests.

2. NGS conducted and published a thorough Life Cycle Assessment of National Geographic magazine's carbon footprint, which Magazines Canada cited as an example for other publishers to follow.

3. Green America's Better Paper Project has targeted NGS with its "Practice What You Print" protests because National Geographic magazine does not use recycled paper.

So amidst all of the Earth Day hype, Dead Tree Edition asks: So which is it, is National Geographic an environmental hero or an environmental villain? More importantly for those of us who buy paper: What exactly is "green" paper?

Does the use of recycled content, as some claim, trump all other factors - such as forestry practices, carbon footprint, and pollution? After all, there's no shortage of demand for recycled fiber. If you don't use it, it's not going to a landfill; someone else will use it.

Perhaps the real benefit of using recycled fiber is to bid up its value, thereby encouraging more recycling. Or maybe it's to keep that fiber from being shipped to China.

Paper represents the majority of the carbon footprint and probably a majority of the environmental impact for almost every publisher. But there's a lot more at stake than how many trees were cut down, or weren't cut down, to make the paper.

Those trees may have come from a sustainably managed forest, where income from timber ensures that the owner doesn't convert the forest to farmland. Or the trees could have been cut in the process of destroying a forest to convert it to a more profitable use.

Paper making is one of the most energy-intensive of all manufacturing industries. But the carbon footprint varies greatly from mill to mill depending upon whether they rely on coal-fired electricity and oil-fired boilers or are using sources like hydroelectric and biomass.

Paper mills can be nasty polluters, as the people who live near the Pearl River can attest. In fact, part of Green America's criticism of National Geographic is that its paper comes from a Verso operation in Maine that is "one of the most polluting paper mills in the United States." (It also notes that the magazine is "perhaps the inspiration for many in the conservation movement.")

But how do you compare one mill's pollutants to another's? I've never seen credible, apples-to-apples data for U.S. mills. How do you compare the toxicity of one pollutant to another? And are we talking about air pollution, water pollution, or whether the products contain nasty chemicals, like BPA (as most coated papers do)?

And which is more important, a product's environmental profile or the environmental record of the company that makes it? In other words, is a paper with 100% recycled content really green if it's made by a company that is raping the rain forest?

I wish I could give you simple answers - "This paper is green. That paper isn't." If you really care about your products' impact on the environment, and aren't just trying to appear green, the best thing I can tell you is to do your homework. Learn what "environmental-hero" companies are doing. Compare suppliers' claims. Ask them why their products are greener than the competitions'. Press them to describe what they're doing to improve and how you can contribute to those efforts.

Iconoclastic Earth Day articles have become a Dead Tree Edition tradition. Here are the offbeat Earth Day features from previous years:

This article originally appeared at Dead Tree Edition (http://deadtreeedition.blogspot.com/), which is written by a magazine-industry manager who goes by the pseudonym D. Eadward Tree. Comments made in this blog are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect that of RISI, Inc., its parent company or sponsors.

China's new five-year plan for the pulp and paper industry

2012-05-07T09:30:59-04:00

China's long-awaited, 12th Five-Year Plan for the pulp and paper industry was released on December, 30, 2011. The latest five-year development plan directing the pulp and paper industry through 2015 targets balanced growth of total paper and board consumption and production (at an annual growth rate of 4.6% for each of them). The final version of this plan is largely in line with market expectations, with a lower growth target and an emphasis on demand and supply rebalancing as well as industry optimization. Different development plans have also been tailor-made for different regions. For instance, the plan for the southern provinces should encourage them to further enhance their growth in the board sector.

However, as for the previous two five-year plans (2000-2005 and 2005-2010), the actual growth figures reached double-digits instead of the planned targets of 5-8% growth. The only exception was that the total paper and board consumption figure rose by 9.1% on average during 2005-2010, which still outperformed the 7.5% growth target set for the 11^th Five-Year plan. Therefore, the new target should be viewed only as a floor.

In 2010, containerboard consumption and production accounted for 42% and 40% of total paper and board figures, respectively. Therefore, this slower-growth target, as compared to the previous Five-Year Plan, will surely have a large impact on the demand and supply outlook in the containerboard sector. Based on our simulation, containerboard consumption and production will account for more than 50% of total paper and board figures by the end of 2015, although the pace of the share increase should slow over the forecast period. After adjusting our forecast model for this policy factor change, our projections for Chinese containerboard consumption are closer to 7-8% for 2011-2015.

For boxboard, our estimate integrates both top-down as well as bottom-up approaches, which consider both macroeconomic trends as well as growth fundamentals in up to 15 major downstream industrial sectors. Based on this, we expect that boxboard demand in China will still to grow at an average pace of 5.7% between 2011 and 2015. Also, it is expected that China will become a net exporter for boxboard this year, as moderation in domestic demand growth have prompted producers to find more growth opportunities in external markets. The detailed analysis and forecast of boxboard demand end-use composition will be provided in the new China boxboard study to be released in next two months.

This is an excerpt from a full story that is available in RISI's Pulp & Paper News Service. Sign in to view full story. Not a subscriber? Try it free!

For a detailed analysis about the impact of China's new Five-Year Plan as well as the Asian paperboard market forecast between 2012 and 2016, please read the latest issue of RISI's Asian Paper Packaging 5-Year Forecast.

Han Yao, Packaging Economist, Asian Paper Packaging, works out of RISI's Beijing office and can be reached at Tel: +86-10-5773-3992 or Email: hyao@risi.com.

What Angry Birds can teach publishers about print

2012-04-30T11:29:35-04:00

The creator of Angry Birds has been a book publisher for less than five months but already grasps a truth that eludes so many long-time publishers.

"It is actually not relevant whether we choose print or a digital channel - what matters is that there is someone out there who cares, who reads, listens, and communicates with us. That's what publishing is all about, communication," Peter Vesterbacka, CMO at Rovio Entertainment Ltd, told The Griffin, papermaker UPM-Kymmene's corporate magazine. Ironically, that quotation is in the print and PDF versions of the magazine but not the web version.

Many panicked publishers seem to have adopted the mindset that the web is replacing print and then apps will replace the web.

No stupid arguments

But Finland-based Rovio and its Angry Birds game apps are so successful that it can actually make intelligent media choices instead of following the herd. You won't hear any of the stupid print-versus-digital debates that dominate the discussions of more experienced publishers.

"Stories can be told through so many channels, the book is not a given in all cases," Sanna Lukander of Rovio Books said in November when the company launched its first title, Bad Piggies' Egg Recipes. "It´s up to us publishers to share the stories in the preferred formats and through the channels that our readers feel comfortable with."

The recipe book, by the way, is not available in Kindle, Nook, or iBook formats. You can only get it in print.

Rovio has followed up with Angry Birds-themed coloring books, board books, and a sticker book - all of which play to print's strengths. Now it is combing through manuscripts "on the lookout for wonderful stories," according to The Griffin.

"I must say," Lukander commented, "that the traditional book is really a wonderful format to cherish."

Bye-bye biomass? Cheap natural gas displaces in-woods fuels at US pulp mills

2012-04-23T10:36:11-04:00

A mild winter in the Eastern USA plus advances in low-cost drilling fattened natural gas supplies and dragged prices to a 10-year low in early April. In fact, prices began falling last summer. Concurrent with that decline in prices, many US pulp and paper mills began switching to higher gas consumption, displacing substantial volumes of biomass. In-woods fiber (logging debris), a relatively new source of fuel, appears to be taking the biggest volume loss initially. Meanwhile, traditional sawmill "hog fuels" (leftovers like bark, sawdust and scraps) face jeopardy, as solid wood companies must dispose of the waste somewhere.

By one major paper company's recent account, only dry fiber (sawmill shavings, a small component) is still competitive with natural gas. Everything else is green and roughly 50% moisture content. Together, in-woods and sawmill biomass account for an estimated $400 million market annually.

Official data is scant but it is estimated that about 40 million tons of biomass are consumed for energy by pulp and paper mills annually, roughly half generated from on-site wood rooms and the remainder purchased on the outside. (Most pulp and paper facilities can deploy "multi-fuels" in boilers, including wood, fossil fuels, purchased electricity and recovered pulp liquors.)

Some are calling the switch to natural gas structural or permanent, while others say halting in-woods crews is risky, if not reckless. One naysayer said "If you think cheap gas is too good to be true, it probably is." Still, an important early movement is underway, although its ultimate impact is unknown. In fact, not a single company contacted could estimate natural gas's impact on the whole industry. "There are just too many variables yet," one mill manager summed.

Either way, some big pulp and paper mills have already plowed ahead full bore while others are currently switching incrementally to more natural gas. In the process, long-time biomass suppliers are obviously scrambling to adjust. More broadly, also giving way to natural gas, consumption of other fossil fuels including coal and fuel oil is set to fall sharply this year.

This is an excerpt from a full story that is available in RISI's Pulp & Paper News Service. Sign in to view full story. Not a subscriber? Try it free!

Chris Lyddan, Director of Timber and Editor of Woodfiber Report and Timberland Markets, works out of his office in Richmond, Virginia and can be reached at Tel: 804.308.0482 or Email: clyddan@risiinfo.com