Wood is our friend. The forest and wood are one and the same. Of all the land used by man that which is closest to nature is the diverse commercial forest. Can it produce an everyday benefit, a beauteous delight and a clear conscience at the same time? Can it be a storeroom of materials, a source of aesthetic pleasure and the effervescence of life simultaneously? It could, if only managed and used as it should be.
Nonrenewable materials are used, some more slowly than others. They are extracted from under the sod, from the stone heart of the earth. They are metal and mineral ores, coal and oil, clay and sand. Those in shortest supply will disappear in a couple of generations, the more plentiful in a few centuries. New elements are created – insignificant in quantity – only in a nuclear reactor. Thus nonrenewable natural resources, useful elements and fossil fuels are increasingly difficult to find. Their disappearance will demand increasingly difficult methods of exploration and utilisation.
In the long run – much further into the future than this book takes us – mankind will have to depend on materials than are renewable, those which nature continuously produces. Only then will man answer the growing threat of entropy.
After food, the most important renewable natural resource is wood, forests. Nowadays this includes paper and planks. In the future the use of wood will change decisively. The recycling of paper, electronic communications and data storage will reduce the use and need for paper. On the other hand, wood will be needed to replace minerals, metals, plastics, oil and coal. Wood will enjoy a renaissance as a building material, and paper will die out as technology advances.
Already now biodegradable polymers are being produced from plants. They are closely related to cellulose and lignin, the basic elements in wood. This technology will undoubtedly be further developed in the future. Thus alongside wood and paper, a variety of multi-functional, organogenic and renewable materials will be created. We may well see a time when most products are made from diverse and virtually inexhaustible natural resources. We should not fear such a time, but welcome it with open arms.
Europe could obtain all it needs from its own forests. We are not dependent upon other peoples’ wood. Let future technology correct this deficiency and stop Europe living at the expense of others. It is time for Europe to mature, become self-sufficient and stand on its own feet.
FOREST STEWARDSHIP
Gertrud Friedell is an open-air enthusiast, an Austrian forest ranger. Her job is to monitor and compile data on an area, some hundreds of square kilometres is size, near Arbesbach in north Austria.
The area has been defined as a commercial forest. Since the beginning of 2035, forest management throughout Europe has strictly ensured that conditions resemble nature as closely as possible, whilst allowing for the careful and economic utilisation of the wood stock. Gertrude’s special field is the observation of fauna and trees in the special test areas dotted throughout the forest. The long-range objective is to monitor the effect of changes in the carbon content of the atmosphere. Other short-term projects include the control of game so that deer and hares do not destroy too many saplings.
Gertrude has actively used her camera to record annual changes in specific forest phenomena. Her photos allow an easy comparison of changes in trees and plants from one year to the next. Game has to be regulated if herbivorous animals get out of hand; anyway, jugged hare makes a pleasant change.
Forest values
A commercial forest could be almost like a natural one. The basic decision forest management has to take is how close a commercial forest resembles untouched nature. Roughly, the choice lies between whether they should be monotonous carpets of trees or diverse, multi-purpose areas. Is it possible to find a happy compromise between the two or could an extensive wooded area be a weave of alternating contrasts? The question is crystallised in the form it takes: to what degree can a balance be struck between purely economic considerations and the degree to which it is worthwhile or necessary to protect nature?
These questions have to be asked if we still wish to be tied to traditional economic considerations and produce as much as possible, efficiently and labour-savingly. Outdated economic values lose their meaning once labour – as in Europe today – is no longer scarce. So long as manpower shortage and the disfiguring of the environment remain basic problems, economic factors are something different from earlier. The shortage is not one of labour but of utilisable natural resources and the precious environment in general. The question is not how much labour different methods require to yield a cubic metre of wood from an area a hectare in size. Even in its simplest form, new thinking concerns which method will yield as much wood as possible in the long run. Or more broadly: the economic benefit an area can produce by comparing the different alternatives. This takes into consideration not only of yield of wood, but subsidiary benefits like the quantities of berries and mushrooms obtainable from the forest.
Aesthetic and ethical values play a part. Some consider them uppermost, others of no importance. Personally, I concur with the former as it leads to the natural and continuous development of forest management. In this book I consider forests as an economic totality, but one based on the available and presumably continuing supply of labour in Europe mentioned above.
The goal is self-sufficiency for Europe. The main problem here is the level of consumption in Europe if all commercial forests are replaced by diversified forests with due consideration paid to felling. Studies show that diversified forests yield larger outputs per hectare than cultivated commercial forests (Agestam, 1985) and that the quality of sawn timber is better (Guldin et al, 1991). A diversified forest is more ecologically sustainable and resistant to insect blights than a single-type forest (Kelly, 1992). Only lopsided, archaic economic thinking prevents Europe’s forests from being managed on a completely natural basis. But just these economic considerations are no longer enough because their fundamental goal is to save human labour.
This is a good place to reiterate my earlier proposal supporting the mechanisation of agriculture. I unreservedly supported the automatisation of industrialised cultivation and a reduction in labour. But agriculture and forestry are very different subjects. The reduction of labour in agriculture does not alter ecological development, whereas in forestry it does.
Forest management methods
There is a great difference between a wood processing industry that stresses nature conservation and one motivated by purely economic considerations.
The following are of primary importance in evaluating nature:
– An adequate number of over-mature, decaying trees should be left in forests.
– Trees of all ages should grow alongside each other.
– There should be a diversity of trees, plants and animals.
– The tree species should be natural to the climatic conditions of the area.
– A forest should be allowed to burn every so often or fires substituted by slash-and-burning logging waste in small areas.
– Clear felling is to be restricted, and ploughing and destructive harvesting forbidden.
Such methods of forest management have already been applied in Europe. For example, the Vestskov area outside Copenhagen is one of the Danish government’s 82 afforestation schemes. It is part of Denmark’s overall strategy which aims at doubling the area under forest. The most popular new plantings are natural trees like oak and beech. These forests prevent the spread of sand dunes and protect the groundwater.
Another example is the almost 4500 hectare forest in the city of Lübeck in Germany. This observes a strict ban on clear felling, the largest permitted area being 0.25 hectares. Ten per cent of the area has been left in a natural state, thus providing a neutral background against which the managed area can be compared. Twenty hectares has been agreed as the minimum size for these comparison areas. The most common species is beech, but the forest also contains poplar, oak and maple. The objective is for a fairly dense growing stock, some 300 cubic metres of solid timber per hectare, which means huge mature trees throughout the area (Figure 48). It is hoped to obtain beeches with a diametre of 65 cm and oaks of 80 cm (Figure 49). The fir, otherwise alien to the local ecosystem, does not stand up to the strong winds. For this reason no artificial means have been used to preserve it. Hares and deer are a problem. There are so many they constitute a threat to sapling growth, but their numbers have been limited by hunting. About half of regeneration growth is harvested.
Figure 48. View of the Lübeck city forest
Figure 49. Forestry officer Stefan Zink with one of the products of the Lübeck city forest
One practical problem in the future will be how to combine sustainability and efficiency in forest management. A forest can be utilised and its natural state preserved by caring for it with solicitude and a major input of labour. A short-sighted benefit can be obtained through the use of huge, destructive harvesters. The basic challenge of the future will be to avoid the drawbacks whilst joining many, apparently contradictory benefits together.
The challenge can be courageously taken up. This means taking the operating details and preservation of the environment, not just efficiency, into consideration in developing harvesters. In addition to tracked, multi-purpose harvesters, Finland is developing one that walks on eight legs and so destroys much less of the undergrowth. This is still far from the ideal.
The ideal machine would be one that ambles along on feet like water cushions that would distribute its uneven weight equally. The harvester’s arm would climb the tree, lopping off branches into a chipping device. It would stop at the point where the stemwood becomes thinner than the desired diametre, lop the crown off for chips, then descend, sectioning the trunk into set lengths and stacking them on the trailer. Such a machine would ensure that no more than the intended amount of waste remains in the forest and the only marks made would be a few slipper-like imprints. As not all the trees are felled, individual stems can be selected from quite dense forests without damaging other trees or nearby vegetation. In its most advanced version the harvester would be unmanned (Figure 50).
This kind of selective felling need not be so natural everywhere. Some species of tree, like the pine, need light and their growth is stunted if the openings are too small. In the wild, pines grow by succession in places opened up by forest fires. If trees in a mixed forest are harvested individually, then in time it could convert into a spruce wood as firs will prevail over pines in dark places. If succession and natural conditions are followed instead of clear felling, then prescribed burning should be carried out to emulate the effect of forest fires.
Figure 50. The forest harvester of tomorrow
Forest growth and yields
As with cereal crops, the volume of timber and the net annual growths per unit of area vary considerably in Europe (Figures 51 and 52). Growth and the volume of timber are interdependent. The growth of an individual tree resembles an integral curve; it rises more steeply during average maturity than when a sapling or over-mature (Figure 53). The same is true of a forest stand where the trees are more or less of the same age. Over the past 40 years the volume of timber per hectare of forest in Europe has increased, likewise the growth of forests per unit of area except in Albania and Greece (Figure 54).
Figure 51. The volume of forests in certain European countries in 1990
(Source: Paper European Data Book, 1993)
Figure 52. The net growth of forests in certain European countries in 1990
(Source: Paper European Data Book, 1993)
Figure 53. Development series of growing stock for different types of forest according to soil type and location in Finland
(Source: Ilvessalo, 1994)
Figure 54. Utilisable part of total forest stock in certain European countries in recent years
(Source: Kuusela, 1995)
The most dense and protected forests in Europe are in the Alpine countries of Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland. The sparsest ones containing little timber are in the mountainous Mediterranean countries of Albania, Greece, Spain and Portugal or in the cold, northern countries like Finland and Norway. Timber volumes are also small in Britain, Ireland and Denmark, although their growth figures are high. The forests are young, which is why their timber volumes are low, but they are growing quickly. Statistics show that in the last decade Europe has begun to appreciate and recognise the importance of its forests. This is not just a question of the production of raw materials, but environmental considerations have strongly influenced attitudes.
In using the average figure for forest reserves the area has a characteristic output. By this I mean the volume of timber that a unit of area produces under sustainable conditions and the average per annum over a long period. It includes the volume of timber obtained from thinnings and final fellings evened out for the whole growth period. The figure varies from one area to another and is influenced by climate, soil and altitude. Forestry researchers call this sustainable planning. If changes in forests are examined over a longer period, then an average ratio can be calculated for the area of forest, volume of the growing stock, total output and growth. The annual growth per unit of area of a forest gives a sufficiently accurate picture of the characteristic output of the area.
Europe’s forest reserves
For the time being it is still possible to divide the economic exploitation of forests into two broad groups. The first concerns the production and processing of sawn timber. The major users are the building and furniture industries. The second is the production of cellulose and its logical extension, the paper industry. The production and consumption of sawn timber and paper is of significance to the future of Europe. To what extent is the continent self-sufficient in these products? In respect to paper, it is a net exporter and is thus self-sufficient (Paper Grades According to Raw Material and End Use, 1995). What about cellulose and sawn timber? One structural characteristic of the European wood industry is that it imports raw materials and semi-finished products for further processing. This dependency on wood imports is not so serious as that on foodstuffs, but changes are required to bring about self-sufficiency.
Europe produces some 163.6 million cubic metres of sawn timber each year and 36.3 million tonnes of cellulose (Paper Grades According to Raw Material and End Use, 1995). In addition it imports 118.6 million cubic metres of raw wood, 20.8 million cubic metres of sawn timber and 5.5 million tonnes of cellulose each year. In other words, Europeans use 184.4 million cubic metres of different types of sawn timber and 41.8 million tonnes of cellulose a year. From this it produces 66.6 million tonnes of paper and board. To produce the sawn timber some 252.6 million cubic metre of trees are felled and another 160.8 million cubic metres to make the paper. So although Europe is self-sufficient in respect to paper, it still imports sawn timber, cellulose and raw wood to produce its paper and sawn timber. The raw wood equivalent of these imports is 68 million cubic metres a year. This means that about 250 000 square kilometres of forest elsewhere in the world is reserved for European use, an area equal to one-fifth of Europe’s own forests. This is unacceptable. The ideal situation would be self-sufficiency in respect to the raw materials used, which is part of the plan outlined in this book.
Europe does not need to import large quantities of raw wood and cellulose. Statistics show that loggings do not exceed the annual rate of growth anywhere. Here we come across a very fundamental question to which no simple answer has yet been provided. How much of the net growth should be left in the forests to decay as waste and maintain diversity and sustainability? If the whole of net growth is harvested from even the smallest of areas, would Europe’s conservation areas be concealed as forests in the statistics? According to this interpretation, so much wood would be left in Europe’s forests that one-third of existing forests would be conservation areas. An even better method from the point of view of the health and diversity of forests is that about one-third of net growth would systematically be left to decay.
The basic land use solutions in the plan are as follows. The importation of raw wood will cease and Europe’s own forests will be utilised on a natural basis. One-third of new growth in all forests will be left to decay. The consumption of paper will be reduced, recycling increased and the use of sawn timber stabilised at its present level. After these measures the true area left for nature conservation will be larger than now and “other land” will be left as a kind of reserve, a buffer against the unexpected.
The location of forests
In addition to the above mentioned lack of self-sufficiency, I must mention another unhealthy phenomenon which will appear in due course.
The imbalance between forests and paper consumption must be corrected. The overpopulated countries of Europe, like Belgium, Holland, Germany, Britain and Italy, are also the poorest in forests. In a way they have treated, with encouragement, the heavily forested countries as colonial reserves to meet their demand for sawn timber and paper. The most important of them are the Scandinavian countries, but also France and Austria are net exporters of wood products. France exports roundwood and Austria imports raw wood and exports sawn timber (FAO Yearbook, Forestry Products, 1990).
It is not only important that Europe is self-sufficient in paper and sawn timber, but that the forests are located where their products are used. The transportation of these materials from one country to another places a heavy burden on the environment. Nowadays a large areas of Finland, Sweden and Norway are used to produce paper and sawn timber for the overpopulated countries of central Europe. But these countries also suffer from a shortage of agricultural land, so forests are competing with croplands. For this reason the area under forest cannot be greatly enlarged. Here I have put bread first and located forests where it is possible from the point of view of agriculture.
In addition to the question of land use, the following chapter assumes that the consumption of paper in the future will decline, whereas that for sawn timber will remain at its present level.
The plan for land use
The absence of self-sufficiency, the lavish use of paper and the discrepancy between supply and demand are to some extent rectified when forests are grown to equate to consumption in Europe (Figures 55 and 56), which is the aim of the plan. I have estimated that the per capita ceiling for paper consumption in Europe is 133 kilos a year. This means, for example, a halving of the present level in Finland. If in certain countries the present per capita figure is well under 100 kilos a year, then I have assumed that it is only 67 kilos a year. Elsewhere the assumption is 100 kilos a year. Thus European countries would have a more uniform per capita consumption than they do at present. Apart from the ideological implications, this is also a realistic forecast. A per capita consumption of 100 kilos a year is a reasonable average for our continent, and even the lower limit would not be so very difficult. As in the case of food, I have also followed consumer habits in this respect. As regards the consumption of sawn timber, I have kept present averages.
Figure 55. Commercial forests in Europe in 1990
Figure 56. The plan for commercial forests in Europe. (See Appendix 1 for calculations)
This leads to the forests presented in Figures 9 and 56. The core issue and choice is the relationship between net growth and fellings. If all the net growth is harvested and the assumed consumption of sawn timber and paper is increased by 50 per cent, then we arrive at the area under forest presented in Figure 56. The consumption of sawn timber would be about 50 per cent more than now and the consumption of paper more or less the same.
The result would change by making a slightly different ideological choice. If one-third of net growth was left in the forests, and the consumption of paper maintained at its present level but that for sawn timber increased by 50 per cent, then we would need an additional 50 per cent in the forest area of Europe as shown in Figure 9. This would have to be taken from “other land”, the area of which would hardly suffice. Nevertheless, “other land” is an invaluable buffer for solving other problems that might arise in the long run, caused, for instance, by the avaricious exploitation of the soil. The outcome of these calculations can be seen in Figure 10.
The above alternatives clearly reveal how few factors the sufficiency of land in our densely-populated continent may depend upon in the centuries to come. For this reason, a long-term forest strategy for the whole of Europe is an absolute necessity.
PAPER AND TIMBER
By the turn of the millennium, everyone accepted that forests were an irreplaceable treasure trove for mankind and the planet. After a long and profound analysis it was recognised that, ultimately, only air and water were more important. All the three elements essential to life and humanity had been squandered for centuries, often on trivialities, Now, fortunately, through knowledge and collective awareness, Europeans had at last come to their senses.
Matti Niemi is a designer of wooden houses for the Forestry District of Joensuu, Finland. His task is not to plan spaces or calculate fatigue resistances, but to make choices. Great interest has been shown in the British Isles in Karelian wooden houses, and Matti now has before him order specifications for three houses. One of his clients, Paul Llewelly, has asked for a two-storey, three bedroom house with a large tea room, a stable for his Shetland pony and his own power generating plant.
The work involved little custom designing, even though all Matti’s houses are unique. The basic structural requirements and the special wishes of clients are fed into the computer, where they are combined with a number of random variables. Paul chooses one of the several alternatives the computer produces as three-dimensional drawings. After this the parts are made from timber, packed and shipped to Wales for assembly. Matti’s programme contains some 700 billion different models, the planning and production of which is completely automatised.
The importance of wood
The forest and its growth, multiple use and utilisation are an integral part of land use of our continent. The commercial forest is a buffer zone between nature and build areas, but it is also connected to the transport infrastructure and livestock production. The fundamental question here is how should a forest be managed, located and utilised. At its worst a forest is like a wilderness, monotonous, lifeless, just a money-making machine. At its best it is almost like a conservation area. Trees are cropped individually in a planned and considerate way, without noise, damaging the undergrowth or changing the structure, or seriously disturbing the diverse life teeming within the forest. I referred to these alternatives in the previous chapter. What happens to the wood afterwards? How to extract the greatest benefit from the cells of wood that have developed over millions of years? Do we need paper? Do we need sawn timber? What else can be made from wood? How do we replace paper and timber?
Paper and timber are to the forest like bread to the field. They are the products of land that could otherwise be used as fields or conservation areas. An area that yields a ton of paper a year, produces two tonnes of wheat in the same time. Wheat, energy and wood all compete for the same land. Labour is not the main scarcity factor today, let alone tomorrow, but space and materials. Strictly speaking, scarcity is a question of organisation not material, because matter cannot be destroyed. But let’s not get too theoretical.
The core task is to solve the above questions through an analysis of the lifespans of wood and wood fibre throughout the continent. Then to study part of the three major parallel and interwoven cycles, each one of which is imperative to the balance of nature and the survival of mankind. These are the cycles of carbon, oxygen and water through the atmosphere and back again into the biosphere. The recycling of paper is an essential part of the production process. It differs from the recycling of other materials in that the quantities recycled are comparatively large. Here we shall consider the lifespan of wood, not as carbon atoms but as fibres. The essential element here is the time used in the cycle.
Wood as paper
The shortest, most expensive and damaging lifespan for wood is when the paper made from it is used for junk mail. Firstly, it takes decades for a tree in a commercial forest to grow from a seed to maturity. A commercial forest is not valued for its beauty, as a habitat for insects or birds, or even as a place for ramblers and the gathers of berries and mushrooms. Whilst it is growing a tree is a frozen asset awaiting maturity. Thus extensive areas, which could have provided thousands of people with a long-lasting aesthetic experience, stimulus, recreation and pantry, are set apart to await a more profitable use, conversion into paper.
Then come the harvesters, battering through the forests like tanks on a battlefield. In a flash they trim and mangle, fell, strip, section and stack timber to await transportation to the pulp mills. All that remains are drafty gaps, felled clearings, waste lands, often stretching as far as the eye can see. Next come the timber trucks. In the same noble cause of exploitation, roads are built for them through the forests which, in their gross deformity and remorseless brutality, beat even the stark concrete jungles of suburban slums.
The logs are then carried down the motorways to the pulp mills, where they are debarked, chipped and boiled into a fibrous sludge. This is washed, sorted, bleached, pressed, dried, cut into sheets, baled and shipped to a paper mill. There it is soaked, rolled into rolls, coated, glazed, cut, baled, packed and shipped to the printers. There it is printed into multi-colour advertising brochures, delivered to the clients, enveloped and posted to the end customers. All this – the gyration of massive machines, the consumption of energy, the thinking, planning and bustle – is to serve that final moment when the housewife tears open the envelope, takes out the brochure, holds it at arm’s length for a brief moment, and chucks it in the wastepaper basket!
This marks the end of the use-life of wood. What follows is fortunately a much shorter and simpler process. After a while the wastepaper basket is emptied into a garbage bin which contains plastic bags, orange peel, old socks and rusty nails. This is then collected by specially designed and manufactured garbage trucks, driven to the municipal landfill, weighed to calculate the cost, tipped into the designated place and often covered with gravel to prevent rats getting at it. The wood fibre gradually degrades and over the centuries is converted into a semi-organic, impure, unusable or harmful mass.
Both ends of this process are slow and useless, lasting many decades. The active productive stage is very quick, just a few days, and the actual use perhaps only a fraction of a second. Fortunately, however, not all paper is used for advertising (Figure 57). And neither does wood generally have to be used in this way.
Forests can be diversified. The types of wood most used for industrial purposes in Europe are oak, spruce, pine and birch, and also some beech and poplar. Both ethical and aesthetic considerations, as well as overall utilisation, require that forests are multi-purpose. In Europe’s rather limited nature, forests contain dozens of species of trees ranging in age from young saplings to decaying trunks, the home of owls, fungi and bugs. The flora and fauna of such forests is very rich and its value can never be measured directly. It is innate. It is not clear felled, but harvested according to the use of each individual tree. Such a forest is not utilised at one specific moment, but continuously.
I am not condemning the use of paper as such. After all, books are the noblest of all things, the intelligentsia of objects. But most paper is used quite unnecessarily, particularly in a society with advanced systems for transferring and storing information. Paper consumption in Europe is largely a wasteful extravagance. The other uses of wood are more long-lasting, so let us consider some of them.
Figure 57. Production of different grades of paper in Finland, 1995
(Source: Paper Grades According to Raw Material and End Use, 1995)
Wood as sawn timber
Most sawn timber is used in the building industry (Figure 58). This is the situation now and it is unlikely to change in the future. It is used for house frames, wall cladding, panelling and parquet flooring, but also furniture and fixtures like window frames, doors, kitchen cupboards and shelves. This only concerns housing. A far larger application concerns public buildings, sports halls, churches and assembly rooms where its use is more sophisticated.
In recent years there has been much discussion concerning the possibility of using wood in blocks of flats, not just as cladding, but in load-bearing structures. Despite my enthusiasm for sawn timber, I remain skeptical. Apart from fire risk and sound insulation considerations, the technical problems of supporting several floors on wooden structures still await a simple and creditable solution. Rather than worry about whether or not wood is the best material for use in building apartment blocks, let us ask ourselves whether we need to build any more of them anyway. This is not a technical detail, but a matter of principle in town planning.
There are many reasons why we should adopt a more reserved attitude towards apartment blocks. The new world of information technology allows far more spacious living, and teleworking and teleconferencing will become more common in the future. Neither will energy generation, waste management and the transportation of goods require that people live close to each other. They will show more interest in their little gardens, the surrounding environment and a quieter life. Later on I propose that people should have at least 700 square metres of living space each. This does not mean apartment blocks and yet will only use a fraction of the total area of Europe.
Even though the volume and quantity of sawn timber used in building is greater than for any other use, wood will still be the most common material used in furniture. And when furniture is linked to dwellings, we can draw the simple deduction that the most ecologically-sustainable material in building is wood. An analysis of the energy content of wood and wooden structures shows that its use is more sensible than any other building material (Figure 59).
Figure 58. Use of sawn timber in Finland, 1993
(Source: Sahatavaran käyttö Suomessa vuonna 1994, 1995)
Figure 59. Energy content of building materials
(Source: Perälä et al, 1990)
Wood processing
As a material, wood is by no means as highly processed as steel from which thousands of combinations have been developed to suit a variety of applications. This is not because it cannot be processed, but more because it has been thought to be too primitive to be used by modern society and sophisticated people.
Recent research, however, has revealed new ways of improving the basic material in wood. Wood has for long been converted into plywood, chipboard, fibre board, laminated beams and industrially produced structures. Research has also widen the range of applications for wood. Its strength and hardness can be considerably increased by compression, maleic resin can improve its reaction to humidity and thermal treatment its resistance to decay. These examples show that the technical possibilities of processing wood are much greater than have hitherto been imagined.
Alternative uses of wood
It is not my intention here to detail the technologies used in the chemical or mechanical wood processing industries, just to roughly examine the balance of material and energy in certain production processes.
There are two main stages in making paper. The first is the production of pulp either by freeing the fibres from wood chips by cooking chemicals or separating them by refining and grinding them mechanically. Pulp can also be made from deinked recycled paper. The second stage is the actual production of paper from the pulp.
The essential differences in the production of chemical or mechanical pulp are as follows:
1. In the chemical process the paper yield from each tonne of wood is only half that of mechanical pulping.
2. Mechanical pulping requires a tremendous amount of energy, whereas chemical pulping is virtually self-sufficient.
3. Chemical pulping produces more waste than mechanical pulping.
4. Recycling produces solid waste and uses far less energy than mechanical pulping.
5. Paper made from chemical pulp is finer than from mechanical pulp.
The raw materials used in making paper are determined by the type of paper desired (Figure 60), so the amount of material and energy used is dependent upon the paper grade. For example, it is estimated that 3.3 megawatts are required to produce a tonne of newsprint.
When looking at paper process diagrams it is important to compare the typical amounts of material and energy in mechanical wood processing. They can be quite large depending on the grade and use of the wood. The waste wood created can, for instance, be used for chipboard, pulping or energy (Figure 61). In making pulp and paper from waste wood, the amount of energy used in making paper out of pulp should also be taken into consideration.
Figure 60. Typical constituents of different grades of paper
(Source: Tiuru, 1994)
Figure 61. The production processes for paper and wood
The most important product of tomorrow’s wood industry will be timber houses containing wooden furniture. These contain the largest volumes of wood and as they become more common there would be many beneficial side effects. There would be a great saving in nonrenewable resources and the number of people living in apartment blocks would decline.
A thorough lifespan analysis for the alternatives uses of wood must be made for the whole continent. This would take into account not only the cycle of wood fibre, but also industrial emissions, the overall consumption of material and energy, land use, and all the environmental and social implications. The time factor is important because the use life of paper and timber is very different. A comparison must be made between the amount of paper and timber taken into use during a hundred-year period. The ideas and analyses in this book are only very rough ones.
The consumption of wood and paper
In determining the right number of forests for each country in Europe, the first question to be asked is how much paper and wood do Europeans need.
The consumption of paper varies considerably from one country to another (Figure 62). It is used to excess in Finland and also in Sweden, Holland, Belgium and Denmark. All these countries belong to the over 200 kilos per capita per annum squanderers’ club. By reducing this amount it would be possible, in the long run, to preserve the forests and use timber for more deserving purposes. A lot of paper could be saved by increasing electronic communications and fibre recycling.
In many industrialised societies, paper is often consumed wastefully because it is not the users, but their employers, who have to foot the bill. Employers are not concerned with such trivial matters as paper, so nobody controls wastage. Readers only need a fraction of the mass of information printed in newspapers and packages are far too big. These individual wasteful actions multiply into a raging torrent. The problem could be solved by legislation, imposing a paper tax or raising the price of paper.
Figure 62. Paper consumption in certain European countries, 1992
(Source: Paper European Data Book, 1993)
Up to now electronic communications have led to an increase, rather than a decrease, in the consumption of paper. This is not particularly logical and it is because people are unfamiliar with the new technology. I assume, however, that once E mail, electronic shopping, educational and other services become widespread, when multi-purpose communications become as much a part of the home as telephones today, and people become accustomed to using new technology from childhood, then the consumption of paper will dwindle to a fraction of its present level.
The recycling of paper fibre has achieved widespread popularity (Figure 63). In certain central European countries, recovery is so effective that the amount of recycled fibre cannot be increased as the number of times fibres can be reused are limited. This means that even in the future, primary fibre will have to be shipped from the Nordic countries to Europe for mixing with recycled fibre. The right place for a paper mill is in the area where the fibre is recovered and the users live, and not in the middle of a forest.
Figure 63. Recovery rate of wastepaper in various countries in 1994
(Source: Pulp & Paper International, 1995)
The use of sawn timber will increase in a natural and acceptable way. If people live in wooden houses with wooden furniture, and build schools, sports halls and other necessary buildings from wood, then they will need about 15 cubic metres of sawn timber per person. This means taking 0.43 cubic metres of roundwood from the forest each year. A careful estimate shows that, after leaving one-third of net growth to decay, each person will require 0.15 hectares of forest to meet his needs.
Sawn timber or paper?
An intelligent way to compare the uses to which a forest can be put is to ask what the average European could do with the estimated 0.67 cubic metres of wood yielded annually from his 0.23 hectares of forest. Here are a few of them:
He can use 0.50 cubic metres as sawn timber and 0.17 cubic metres as paper. He recycles the paper in order to obtain 100 kilos of paper a year. These are the same figures as those aimed at in the plan.
He can use 0.33 cubic metres as sawn timber and 0.34 cubic metres as paper without recycling any. He still gets 100 kilos of paper a year, but the quantity of sawn timber is less and also lower than nowadays.
He can use 0.33 cubic metres as sawn timber and 0.34 cubic metres as paper. He recycles the paper in order to obtain 150 kilos of paper a year. This is higher than the present level of about 130 kilos a year. This solution favours the paper consumer.
He does not use any raw material as sawn timber, but 0.67 cubic metres as paper without recycling any of it. He still gets 150 kilos of paper a year, but has no sawn timber to use. This is the ideal solution for paper manufacturers.
These are theoretically extremes the purpose of which is to emphasise the effect and outcome of the different alternatives. It is not worth producing sawn timber or even paper from all woods, so the solutions lead to different types of forest growth. Not all tree stands have the same character, neither do they always have alternative uses.
The four alternatives mentioned above are feasible because mechanical wood can be completely replaced by other materials. Ultimately it is a question of human choice. You either live in a wooden house with wooden furniture, use public buildings made from wood and give priority to electronic communications, or you build from concrete, metal and plastic and use paper indiscriminately. Although I consider the former more satisfying, it does not depend on the individual as it effects the environment and society as a whole. To thoroughly analyse these effects it is not enough to evaluate the immediate influence of the former alternative, but also the overall significance of electronic communications and building in concrete.
I am not going to go that far here. Instead I shall only ask what are the environmental consequences of the planned alternative when thinking about the continent as a whole and the lifespan of products in particular.
The impact of change
We shall now assess the impact of changes in the use of land and materials once the consumption of paper and sawn timber has been rationalised in the following ways:
1. The amount of primary fibre used in paper making is reduced from its present continental level of 60 per cent to 50 per cent (Pulp & Paper International, 1995).
2. In accordance with the plan, the average annual consumption of paper per capita falls from 129 kilos to 101 kilos.
3. The consumption of sawn timber remains at its present annual level of 0.67 cubic metres per capita.
4. Europe’s population declines by 5 per cent from its present level.
5. Forests are grown nearer consumers in order to reduce transportation.
6. Europe is self-sufficient in respect to paper and wood.
7. A third of net growth is left in the forests.
These measures will affect the area and quantities of raw materials required for the production of paper and sawn timber in Europe as follows: The required area of forest is 1.1 million hectares, from which 307 million cubic metres of wood are taken each year.
In the light of these assumptions, the area required for the production of paper and sawn timber will fall slightly, likewise the quantity of wood used. The consumption of energy will also fall slightly, but all these assumptions are very approximate, and the point of departure has a decisive effect on the end result. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that Europe will have use its forests more carefully if it wishes to achieve its goal of self-sufficiency.
Figure 64. A large log provides a great deal of timber. (Photo: Perttu Rista)
Urgent measures
Europe must impose a tax on paper in order to reduce excessive use. Another urgent matter is to make a lifespan analyses of the continent’s forests, wood and paper, which would produce alternative plans. In choosing between them, emphasis should be placed on the goal of self-sufficiency. Politically, a line has to be drawn between pulp and planks. It is important here to reach unanimity on how large a part of net growth should be left in the forest, as well as on all the other essential principles relating to forest management. The forests of Europe should never be left to the mercy of the laws of the countries in which they happen to be located.
