Forest stewardship needed to stop trees falling victim to paper chase

By Elisabeth Jeffries

Date: 22/04/04

FILMGOERS were moved when Treebeard of Fangorn Forest boomed "nobody cares about the trees any more" in The Two Towers (2002), Peter Jackson's film adapted from the second part of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. If their plight reflected contemporary concern about industrial growth, it is ironic that, 60 years after they were first published, the movie should send millions of children to bookshops to discover the novels, made largely from virgin paper.

J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman and other Tolkien successors have, however, signed up to a Greenpeace procurement petition aiming to set the book publishing industry to rights in the UK, while in the Netherlands a related offensive scooped up a host of conversions from Dutch publishers this month.

This "has set a real precedent for other countries in Europe to follow", says Belinda Fletcher, who runs the campaign - known as "Save or Delete" - which challenges book publishers to use ancient forest friendly paper (AFF). That means preferably 100% post-consumer recycled content or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accreditation.

The NGO says the majority of book paper in the Netherlands, as in the rest of Europe, is sourced from Scandinavian countries that contain some of the last fragments of old growth forest in Europe, as well as from Russia, where at least 50% of logging is estimated to be illegal.

It is a tall order. According to the Confederation of European Paper Industries, its members produced around 91 million tonnes of paper and board in 2002 alone, consumed by book, magazine and newspaper publishers (as well as other industries).

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has predicted that production in 2020 will have rocketed by 77% compared to 1995.

Nevertheless the Dutch are taking the lead. Michiel Gaaf, production director at one of the country's 14 publishers, De Arbeiderspers, says his company's printer is switching to a supplier who will provide paper with 40% of content approved by the FSC and 60% bearing Pan European Forest Certification (PEFC). This is a Scandinavian accreditation that rivals the FSC.

While the FSC accreditation takes social, environmental and economic considerations into account, PEFC omits the first two.

Arbeiderspers publishes around 200 books per year, equating to around a million copies or 200 tonnes of paper.

Gaaf estimates that FSC paper is 10-12% more expensive than his previous source if it makes up 40% of his purchases. If it is mixed with other fibre, the price could be 4-5% higher than previously. The bigger the volume bought, the more favourable the deal is likely to be.

Nevertheless "there could be a 2-3% cost increase in books", he thinks.

Cost may not have been the only deterrent so far. "There isn't enough FSC-pulp to meet the newly developed demand of the Dutch publishers, the same goes for the right quality of recycled," explains Pim Heijselaar, a Greenpeace officer.

"This was also the case in Canada [where the NGO first moved in on this issue]. However because of the demand from a group of willing publishers, the paper industry started making this special quality recycled paper for book production. The FSC supply grew because of the initiative."

Prejudice may also have been an issue, he suggests: "There is the fear that the quality of the ancient forest-friendly paper will not meet the publishers' specifications.

"With FSC-pulp that is unfounded, because FSC is also virgin fibre.

"In the case of recycled pulp, publishers fear that the paper will look like the cheap American paperbacks similar to newspaper quality. However, in the past few years, papermakers have developed a quality similar to the existing virgin fibre paper."

As in most EU countries, no Dutch book publisher has ever used FSC, though books have been printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper. That is because, explains Heijselaar, "the whole production chain needs FSC certification: the forest manager, the mill, the paper manufacturer and the printer".

• Elisabeth Jeffries is a UK-based journalist specializing in environment issues.

Book publishing companies are being encouraged to use ancient forest friendly paper (AFF) by a campaign known as 'Save or Delete'.

http://www.fscoax.org/ http://www.fscoax.org/

http://www.cepi.org/ http://www.cepi.org/

http://www.pefc.org/ http://www.pefc.org/

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