CHINA LEARNS TO SAVE FORESTS

[Anonymous]

China’s recycling ‘saves forests’
Recycling paper reduces the need for virgin wood, the report says
China’s
massive capacity to recycle waste-paper is preventing many forests
around the world from being destroyed, a report has concluded.The
nation’s paper industry imported almost 20 million tonnes in 2006,
primarily from the US, Europe and Japan, according to NGO Forest Trends.

The group said about 60% of the fibre used in producing paper was recycled.
But
it warned that timber from illegal logging was probably still being
used to meet the surge in demand.”Just last year, China’s use of
waste-paper instead of trees to make paper products probably saved 54
million metric tons of wood being harvested for pulp,” said Brian
Stafford, the report’s lead author.Over the past decade, the study
said, the nation’s imports of waste-paper had increased five-fold,
making it the world’s biggest consumer of the material.”In the last
four years alone, China has prevented 65 million tonnes of waste-paper
from heading to landfills in the US, Japan and Europe,” Mr Stafford
added.

Resource hungry
But
he warned that recycling was unlikely to meet the demand for raw
materials from the rapidly expanding sector    “Waste-paper can only
provide so much fibre, and with huge new paper mills coming online in
China, there is a legitimate concern that future growth in the industry
is going to happen at the expense of already stressed natural forests
in the tropics.”The biggest environmental challenge… is to prevent
demand for fibre from driving ever more forest destruction in places
like Indonesia and eastern Russia,” Mr Stafford warned.The report
called on producers to adopt systems to track pulp and pulpwood to
ensure it came from “legal and sustainable” forests.On Tuesday, China’s
Forestry Ministry published a draft handbook “sustainable forestry” for
the nation’s logging companies operating in other countries.The
ministry said the booklet would “guide and standardize Chinese
companies’ sustainable forestry activities overseas”, the Reuters news
agency reported.

[Author]

July 16, 2007 at 10:55 AM