Recyled or Not Recycled - That is the Question?

http://www.fopap.org/

Challenging the understood order, or commonley held belief that recycled and recyclying paper is a good idea. May be its just my occupation that makes me do this, however, looking beyond the now you realise that to say that "we only buy recyled and recycle paper" because it is good for the environment is not necessarily true.

For an idea of what I'm talking about look at the above link, read some of the simple articles and open your mind to the idea that what we are told is not the whole truth.

To make paper you need

1) A tree

2) Water

3) Chemicals of some sort

4) A facility to make it in.

Ok, all the above use power in their combination, the end result being paper. This paper has embedded carbon and this carbon would get released upon the paper's destruction.

Now with recycled paper you create less CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents) than creating virgin pulp however you can only recycle paper for the same use about 4 times. So when you use recycled you create less CO2e than virgin for the same amount of use. However virgin will have used more trees than recycled and those trees have carbon locked up in them so this offsets the CO2e produced in the manufacture and results in not only a carbon neutral process but a decent chunk of locked up carbon.

Now one of the articles on the FOPAP site is a research exercise conducted in Australia into landfill that found that paper and wood products are not degrading as fast as we think, in fact some have stopped degrading at all. This means that the carbon locked up in them is not being released.

One last bit before I wander off and think about more esoteric things like whats for tea and where have all the digestives gone is this - Virgin pulp comes from farmed trees. When one is cut down for paper another is planted. So the more recyled we use, the less trees are cut down, the less demand for those trees and the likelyhood that the land they are grown on will find other uses such as arable or pasture land. This means less trees overall.

Bugger!