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Comment by soupbowl | Hacker News Reader

Just a note: paper is either made of dead standing trees or wood that is so full of rot/defect that no lumber can be made from it. It is a common misconception that live green trees and whole forests are destroyed for paper.

- a former woodsman for 13 years

Edit: My experience is in western Canada. I forgot that hackernews is a global site. Some countries do grow pine specifically for paper.

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Very much not true here in the USA. We have hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of acres set aside specifically for paper. It has been sustainable for well over 100 years and is super well planned, mostly by private companies.

Was going to say the same thing. I recently worked on a piece that walks through the history of managed forests: http://blog.lumi.com/managed-forests

The tree production may be sustainable, but if this article holds true, 100 tons of water for a single ton of paper can't be good for the environment.

Not to mention all the chemicals dumped in the air during production! I'm not sure if the stone paper will create less air pollution, but it bothers me when people think creating paper is an environmentally neutral process just because we have the first step of the process figured out.

Ahem.. but what can happen to water? Apparently it is not destroyed

Fresh water used for industrial processes generally makes its way to the oceans. We have essentially no way to deliberately replenish our ground water sources and the natural process is extremely slow.

I'm not sure that is entirely correct. I live in San Jose, CA and we have groundwater recharge ponds. Throughout the city the water company has plots of land that they keep entirely covered with water. The idea is it soaks in, and then other people pump it back up.

http://www.valleywater.org/Services/Groundwater.aspx

I think the point is there is a specific rate at which that type of process is viable, and it is limited by available land and geography. As population grows, that becomes less doable.

That's interesting. I wasn't aware that there was significant recharge from human-managed/created basins. It looks like >50% of the recharge in Santa Clara county is non-natural. But it also looks like it still falls short of the demand from pumping.

[pdf] http://www.valleywater.org/Services/Clean_Reliable_Water/Whe...

> Fresh water used for industrial processes generally makes its way to the oceans. We have essentially no way to deliberately replenish our ground water sources and the natural process is extremely slow.

Then industrial processes shouldn't use groundwater. It doesn't sound like a good idea to site them where there isn't abundant surface water.

Paper mills might largely draw from rivers (I honestly don't know), but that doesn't fully alleviate the impact. Industrial processes pulling water impact downstream users, by reducing the amount of water (whatever percentage is not returned) and reducing the quality of the water that remains if they are dumping the used water back into the river.

But yes, if they use surface water, it considerably reduces the impact vs groundwater.

But if you read the article, you will note that the "paper" is made from limestone and polyolefin, which is a plastic, which is also not good for the environment.

Just to add to this, I used to live near a paper mill, and had friends who worked there. More than half of their feedstock was sawdust and waste chips from the local sawmill, and about a quarter was recycled. Very little virgin wood was used, and what was used was not usable for anything else.

That being said, I wish this guy luck. Having different tech available for use in areas where it would be a better way to do things is not a bad idea.

Here in south America paper mills work with massive pine plantations, in deforested land or in former wetlands.

Same in New Zealand.

I am from western Canada, I guess it is not the same every where.

I know someone who used to work for a paper forrester --the trees they plant are exclusively grown in managed timberlands for conversion to paper --no other use. They use fast growing varieties of trees[1]. The likes of Wayerhaeuser and others.

[1]https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-fast-growing-trees-for-pap...

But they grow the pines for paper and then regrow them? Is the whole operation sustainable? According to Penn and Teller's "Bullshit", it is.

Yes, they use mostly young pines which are easily chipped. I think in about 6 years you can cut them for paper.

8-10 years. Most (~80%) of the power needed in a paper mill is generated from the bark of the tree which is converted into fuel using several chemical mixtures. Overall, the paper industry is actually very sustainable.

I'm more curious about the byproducts and energy consumption of each manufacturing process. I have no idea, does anyone have a good comparison?

Aside: supposedly global pulp production is 34 percent recycling, 45 percent from sawmill waste, and 21 percent 'logs and chips.'[0] The wikipedia article later states, from another source, that 16 percent of production comes from tree farms. The gist of your general point stands, as I understand it: we're not going out and cutting old growth or even secondary growth forests for paper (though we make use of reject trees when we target them for other reasons).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_(paper)

This http://bioproductmill.com/bioproducts is probably at the moment most advanced pulp mill in the world and it produces 1,800 GWh per year.

A large majority of the energy used in paper mills comes from the bark of the trees. Logs have to be debarked before they can be pulped and the bark eventually becomes fuel that supplies power to much of the mill.

What do we clear out to make room for the tree farms and what is their long term effect on the environment?

http://www.ibiblio.org/london/agriculture/general/1/msg00074...

http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/why-tree-plantations-...

(not to say a limestone quarry is a better solution...)

Please write about being a woodsman somewhere and submit it. I would love to read about it

I am a terrible writer but I have still considered it many times. I've seen a lot of incredible things being out in nature all the time. Also there are many misconceptions about logging that I like to clear up. But my stories are usually better at a party with a glass of wine!

Can you share just one incredible thing with people here who never worked out in nature? I'm very curious.

I was working nightshift in an area with a lot of timber wolves. For three nights after sunset one wolf would sit just in the range of my lights and watch me. Dayshift would see the rest of the wolf packs tracks behind my machine each morning. Each night when I would drive home that single wolf would lead me out of the work site by walking ahead of my truck (The roads are rough, you have to drive slow). The most interesting thing that I noticed was: (besides how surprisingly large a timberwolf is) the wolf always walked in the shallowest snow. It is hard to explain why it was interesting, the wolf just seemed very aware and thought out in the way it moved.

I have also spent time with Lynx at a close proximity, both times they purred and acted like a house cat. Before hissing and slowly walking away.

From this small sample, I'd say you're a pretty darn good writer...at least as judged by telling interesting stories.

Please just start blogging the way you talk. Don't think of it as writing at all. That paragraph was golden .

In agreement with the other replies, I enjoy your writing. I mean, your experience isn't super-interesting but you describe it almost poetically.

That was lovely. I created an account just to tell you to please keep writing. I'd love to hear more about your work in the woods.

I'm going to echo the chorus of praise from others, your writing is great and you should definitely consider blogging about your experiences.

I'd also like to point out how great it is that we have such varied commenters here on HN. I checked in tonight to see what's new with the NSA/Apple/Snapchat/usual tech stories of the day, and instead I got this gem about the timber industry and wolves.

I would also happily read more about your experiences!

I would LOVE to read your stories. I am working on a simulation based game and stories like these are a great inspiration.

> working on a simulation based game > stories like these are a great inspiration

I'm sorry if I come across as stupid. I don't see the connection between these two assertions.

Interesting stories can provide a useful framework for inspiration, setting goals, or looking at what "rule sets" are in play.

If it's intended to be a "simulate (a substantial part of) everything" game, the above stories suggest game elements such as different depths of snow, non-hostile wild animal interactions, animal pathing behavior in snow, tracks, and animal habits/routines.

Dwarf Fortress has for a long time used short stories to describe interesting interactions that the developers like, and then tried to add features to the game until similar events can just happen naturally.

Thanks for answering this to me. This is what I have in mind basically. I'm also working on something like Dwarf Fortress but a "lite" version which is more accessible.

Next time you tell a story at a party with a glass of wine, record it. Then write it up later and share it with us!

That is a good idea, thanks!

If you want, I'd be happy to help you write / edit. I am familiar with the industry, but have never worked in it.

Most stories are. But that doesn't mean they're uninteresting in other settings!

I thought they mainly used fast-growing pine plantations planted specifically to harvest for paper.

(Which still isn't 100% ideal, because monocultured pine isn't friendly to the local species and they're generally devoid of animal life, but way better than clearcutting wild forest.)

It is possible that some where in the world people do that. Lumber is worth far more money than paper, especially in our current economy. Growing trees for paper in a forest rich area like western Canada is more effort than it's worth and more expensive.

This is not true, most of the material for pulp comes from forest thinning, recycled paper and leftovers from sawmills, at least if you talking industrial scale.

If only this were true.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/26/sumatra-borneo...

>Official figures show more than half of Indonesia's rainforest, the third-largest swath in the world, has been felled in a few years and permission has been granted to convert up to 70% of what remains into palm or acacia plantations.

>Nine villages have been in conflict with the giant paper company April, which has permission to convert, with others, 450,000 hectares of deep peat forests on the Kampar Peninsula in central Sumatra. Because the area contains as much as 1.5bn tonnes of carbon, it has global importance in the fight against climate change.

It's not just wood. From the article:

> To make a ton of regular paper requires 100 tons of water, TBM says, while its Limex paper is made without water.

This may or may not be a problem. Areas like Canada or Northern Europe have excessive amounts of water, and water preservation does not make sense. In some places domestic water usage is even encouraged to make sure the flow in fresh water tunnels stays brisk enough.

As far as I have understood it, this is mostly a result of overbuild infrastructure. They planned the capacity of some central pipes and sewers in a time where modern water saving technology wasn't yet used as much or even invented, because such projects are supposed to last a few decades. They build for growing usage and population based on the historic growth, but then water saving became a big thing, appliances became much more efficient, and people moved to other parts of the country and the bigger cities etc. So now that infrastructure is underutilized and flow is too low in some parts. But this is managed by the water companies, which know best where and when to increase flow. This is pretty localized, for example when they planned for a future housing development that never came, and just flushing twice won't put a dent in it anyways. Building a papermill in a suburb or countryside is also probably not the most efficient way to solve it.

There's no such thing as "excessive amounts of water." Just because current demand hasn't exhausted our current water supplies doesn't mean it's not worth conserving.

Here in Canada we have the Great Lakes which account for 21% of the worlds fresh water. And they're rapidly becoming polluted.

Humanity always finds a way to squander whatever resource you think we have "excessive amounts" of.

From the article: "In place of 20 trees, it uses less than a ton of limestone, as well as 200 kilograms of polyolefin."

200 kilograms of polyolefin, a class of compounds produced by polymerization of alkenes, which are derived from petrochemicals or ethanol, both of which come from water-intensive sources.

Also, is this stuff biodegradable at all? It's basically stone dust infused with an extremely stable plastic. This stuff would last a thousand years in a landfill...

On the other hand: how durable is it. If it can limit smudges and doesn't soak water or sweat easily, it could be an alternative where people would laminate otherwise. This is speculation of course, as I don't know what that stone paper is like.

Can confirm from selling some wood from inheritance lands to pay the inheritance tax. Basically the good trees get sold for lumber and the ones not good enough become cellulose/paper (with the big machines you always do a full clearing as its more economical this way so you don't get to leave the small ones to grow etc.). This is from Finland.

And as others have pointed out most of the raw material going into the local paper mill was saw dust from the local sawmills.

This is not completely accurate either, you don't necessarily do full clearing even with the big machines. Typically there's couple of thinnings in the growth cycle from sapling stage to old forest, the whole cycle taking something like 70 years. Mostly you do full clearing at the end and then replant. This is my experience, also from Finland.

Yup, the shit wood gets put into pulp, the good stuff gets sawn out for lumber or veneer logs.

Hardwood pulp is just barely worth more than the stumpage fees that the loggers must pay to the landowners. Depending on the market, softwood pulp can be even less profitable.

Do the waste wood chips from a typical lumber mill go into particle board or might they also go into paper?

It depends on the mill and the current economy. The wood chips will not be used for pulp but instead burned to generate power for the mill, made into fire pallets, particle board or other similar product. Based on what makes the most money in the current economy and the products the mill is equipped to make.

In Tasmania they are used to make paper.

This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing. I wonder what % of people know this.

It's not true. It's based on one person's observation (in this case a Canadian woodsman).

Plantation trees are used to make paper in New Zealand and Australia. That is my personal observation, but it is enough to disprove the claim that paper is only made from dead or rotting trees.

> Plantation trees are used to make paper in New Zealand and Australia.

Same for Brazil and Uruguay - they go for certain kinds of eucalyptus trees. How do I know, not having visited either country?

My wife is a chemical process engineer, and Finland has a large pulp and paper industry. The technology universities feed process and design engineers there. (To a point where some universities' chemistry departments have been neatly coupled with local pulping industry.)

Eucalyptus family has some surprisingly fast-growing varieties. Also, according to the industry, their fibre competes in quality and properties with Scandinavian birchwood. This kind of fibre is particularly wanted for high-quality printing paper.

It takes 40-50 years for a birch to grow from seedling to a pulpable "product". With plantation eucalyptus, this time frame is compressed to 15-20 years. You can crunch the numbers.

The irony in this is that in in order to make space for eucalyptus plantations, the industry had to cut something down first. And due to the time frames involved, they need to constantly make space for new plantations so they can provide a reliable future supply.

The thing they cut down? Rain forest. (Among other things. But certainly enough of it to warrant concern.)

Final note: you can't grow eucalyptus in Scandinavia. According to Brazilian process engineers, eucalyptus can withstand one or two sub-zero temperature nights a year. Call it two max. Not two hundred.

Good observation. Another note about eucalyptus is that aside from paper or firewood, it doesn't have much use. It can't really be dried without extensive warping or splitting and doesn't have any use as lumber.

My dad worked at a paper mill in Australia, and all around were plantation pine forests. The plant was making all sorts of household paper goods - paper towels and toilet paper. I don't think it made actual writing paper though.

People don't realize that we farm trees. It's a crop, like wheat or corn.

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