The Compass

Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: News

You'll soon notice a change on campus: standard colorful recycling bins, deployed in pairs in the hallways. One will accept mixed paper (office paper, magazines, books…) and the other will accept mixed plastic. The Gainesville State College Environmental Committee, an advisory group composed of faculty, staff, and students, has been actively developing a recycling program for the Oakwood campus. Soon we will ask you to do your part. You'll take note of bin locations; you'll learn what items are recyclable; and you'll take a moment to toss your recyclables in an appropriate bin. At that point the angels will sing a heavenly chorus and you will receive one brownie point.
Maybe you're skeptical about schemes that ask everyone to do their part for the environment. Other than your brownie point, and perhaps an invite to party with Brangelina, why bother with this environmental mumbo-jumbo? Why should you help by tossing your recyclables in the new bins?
Well, recycling isn't strictly about saving the rainforest. Recycling makes strong business and environmental sense. It is your choice to support an economy that's more efficient. It's your vote for local employment and healthier regional industries. To see why, let's go on a paper chase. How does this exciting newspaper get from a tree to your backpack to its final resting place in a landfill? We'll look at the conventional path this journey might take, and then compare it to the pathway through a recycling economy.
From Forest to Landfill: the Long, One-Way Trip. First let's trace the conventional route. Paper's story usually starts on vast plantations of pines or other softwood trees held by private owners. While we're here in the piney forest, let's put one myth to rest: we are not in imminent danger of running out of trees. According to a 2004 Forest Inventory Analysis carried out by the USDA Forest Service and the Georgia Forestry Commission, 67% of Georgia's land is forested and there has been about a 30% increase in forest volume since 1972. The supply of young softwood trees for pulp is projected to grow faster than demand for the next several years.
So what are the drawbacks to using those trees to make paper? Pulpwood harvest is a highly mechanized affair, especially on large forests. It involves evocatively named equipment such as mechanized feller-bunchers, grapple skidders, and (my personal favorite) whole-tree chippers. These machines are used to pluck, strip, and grind young pines into pulp in a matter of seconds per tree. The chips are then trucked to a pulp mill, where water-intensive processes are used to bleach and refine the pulp. According to the Georgia DNR Pollution Prevention Assistance Division, as much as 40,000 gallons of water might be required to produce a ton of dry pulp from a Georgia pulp mill.

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