Paper industry targeted over environment impact

Paper industry targeted over environment impact
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s1934061.htm
Reporter: Timothy McDonald
ELIZABETH JACKSON: To make paper, manufacturers often need to cut down trees, pulp the wood, and then bleach what's left.

A new report from Access Economics says making a humble sheet of A4 paper has significant environmental consequences.

The paper industry concedes that there are environmental costs, but says the industry is a relatively clean one.

Timothy McDonald reports.

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Computers have so far failed to make the workplace paperless.

In fact, Australia consumes well in excess of one and a half million tonnes of office paper each year.

The Director of Access Economics Steve Brown says making all that clean white paper can be a dirty business.

STEVE BROWN: Paper manufacturing has got a number of dimensions to its process where it can inflict some damage on the environment, whether its through the sourcing of pulp or the emissions of greenhouse gases or other effluents into river systems.

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Manufacturer Double-A paper commissioned Access Economics to write a report on the environmental costs of making paper.

It found that paper from the developing world usually has the biggest environmental cost.

Australian companies do better, but they often leave a bigger carbon footprint than European manufacturers, because they're more reliant on fossil fuels.

Even recycled paper incurs environmental costs, because it needs to undergo a bleaching process and it requires considerable energy to produce.

Steve Brown says it's up to the government to do something about those costs, through regulations that would see them included in the consumer price.

STEVE BROWN: If all the environmental costs were taken into account then the price of paper would actually go up between four and 39 cents a ream, depending on where you got your paper from.

One of the issues with environmental costs is that they're not often factored into the end price.

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: The Australian Plantation Products and Paper Industry Council says the environmental impact of paper is tiny when compared to other industries.

The Manager of Pulp and Paper Miles Prosser says Australian manufacturers are well regulated, and environmentally conscious.

MILES PROSSER: It's a renewable resource, plantations are grown for the purpose of paper and they're grown and re-grown. In Australia we have very high rates of paper recycling, more than 50 per cent of the fibre we use to make paper in Australia is recycled.

And any of the industries or paper mills that are manufacturing paper are very tightly controlled in terms of what can happen.

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Environment groups say one way to reduce the impact is to consume less.

John Dee runs Planet Ark, an organisation that encourages practical steps to reduce environmental impacts.

He says that the paperless office isn't common yet, but he's now gone paperless, and he's spoken to many corporations who've done the same.

He says most companies do it because it reduces costs, but there are also environmental benefits.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Timothy McDonald with that report.