LISTENING
STUDY Question 64:
How much of all timber harvested goes into making paper?
LISTENING
STUDY: Most responses reference the percentage of trees
harvested worldwide.
42%
of the forests cut every year go towards the production
of pulp and paper. - Forest Ethics
Forty
two percent of the world's total harvest of wood for
industrial purposes, everything but fuelwood, goes towards
paper production. - Taiga Rescue Network
Of
the wood harvested for "industrial" (everything but
fuelwood), fully 42 percent goes to paper production.
This proportion is expected to grow in the coming years
since the world's appetite for paper is expanding twice
as fast as that for any other major wood product. By
2050 it is expected that pulp and paper manufacture
will account for over half of the world's industrial
wood demand.
The United States produces
about one third of the world's pulpwood, with most of
it grown in the Southeast. - Abramovitz 1999
Forty-two
percent of the world's industrial wood harvest goes
to paper, so using less paper is an excellent way to
reduce the demand for wood products. - Co-op
America
40%
of the world's industrial logging goes into making paper
and this is expected to reach 50% in the near future.
- Abramovitz 1998
More
than 40 percent of logged trees is used for paper. -
Resource Conservation Alliance, Focus on Paper
Consumption
My
guess is about 30-40 percent. - Frank Locantore,
Co-op America
Paper
is the fastest growing segment of the wood products
industry and by extremely conservative estimates at
least one out of every three trees harvested today ends
up as pulp. Forest activists believe that percentage
is far higher. - Imhoff 1999
About
30% of the wood we use is for pulp and paper, half of
which is made from sawmill waste from the production
of solid wood products. - Transcript from Trees
Are the Answer, video hosted by Dr. Patrick Moore,
Green Spirit, 2001
LISTENING
STUDY: Other responses specify the percentage of trees
harvested in the United States.
Pulpwood
production (in the United States) tripled from 1952
to 2001, increasing to about a quarter of total harvest.
- The
H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and
the Environment
In
the U.S., 500 million acres, an area almost three times
the size of Texas, is used to grow wood for paper. -
Cefola 2001
27%
of roundwood production in the United States goes to
papermaking. - Stora Enso (Source: An Analysis
of the Timber Situation in the U.S., USDA Report)
Approximately
one third of all wood harvested in the U.S. is used
to make paper or paper products. - Victoria Mills,
Project Manager, Corporate Partnerships, Environmental
Defense
Weyerhaeuser
reported that in contrast to 1950, when it had 21 percent
timber utilization per acre, by 1975 the company was
converting 28 percent of the harvested timber into lumber,
10 percent into plywood, 9 percent into particle board,
and 32 percent into paper - for a total of 79 percent
utilization. Some of the remaining 21 percent was used
for fuel. - Cox 1985
[W]hat
is generally less well understood and documented is
the significant integration between pulp producers an
dlumber and other wood products producers around the
use of wood residues: shavings, slabs, chips
and sawdust. This secondary materials flow in fact substantially
supports the corporate organization. . . . Because there
are only a certain number of solid rectilinear objects
(lumber) that can be produced from cylindrical objects
(logs), the yield, or proportion of lumber produced
to roundwood consumed, averages only about 38 percent
(softwood) to 49 percent (hardwood). In other words,
some 50 to 60 percent of the wood that enters a sawmill
emerges in the form of wood residues. Similarly,
the yield of plywood and veneer products ranges from
about 45 to 57 percent of the incoming roundwood, leaving
the remainder as residues. On balance, slightly more
than half o the roundwood (sawlogs and veneer logs)
that enters sawmills or plywood and veneer mills emerges
as wood residues, and these residues have become a valuable
commodity in their own right. In fact, it is more accurate
to view wood residue as a valuable co-product
than as a by-product of lumber and other wood
products manufacturing. . . .
For [1986] the U.S. Forest
Service calculated that the use of wood residues from
lumber, plywood, and veneer mills was apportioned as
follows: pulp (55 percent); fuel (28 percent); particleboard,
fiberboard, and miscellaneous industries (11 percent);
and export (3 percent). Only about 3 percent of wood
residues went unused, producing an overall efficiency
of roundwood use approaching 100 percent. - Maureen
Smith 1997
LISTENING
STUDY: Still other responses reference the percentage
of trees harvested in a particular region of the United
States.
Currently,
the southern U.S. is by far the largest paper-producing
region in the world, with 103 pulp mills producing approximately
25% of the world's paper. - Dogwood
Alliance
In
Maine about 50% of all timber harvested goes into making
paper. - Robert R. Bryan, Forest Ecologist, Maine
Audubon
The
proportion of a timber cut going to paper versus other
beneficial uses is highly dependent on the manufacturing
facility, geography, and local market. Maximum yields
for a groundwood mill are around 50%, and about 25%
for a Kraft pulp mill. International Paper gets most
of the pulp for paper from thinning the forest through
a saw timber rotation and therefore it is very difficult
to precisely determine how much of the cut comprises
a paper product. - International Paper
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