SDIS- WCem Vly 1M bri BN po TOP STORY YESTERDAY’S PAPER Continued from Page 1 Percival sees no let-up in the | @ demand for recycled paper despite its extra cost. He said discussions have been held with at least one major print client to use recycled paper on an ongoing basis. There is a growing desire for cor- porations to be seen as part of a solu- fion to environmental problems rather than part of them. The highly- visible newspaper industry has be- come a target for the demands of environmentalists. MacMillan Bloedel’s Canadian newsprint sales manager said while public demands for recycling are laudable on the one hand, some of those pushing for recycling arent _ very practical. He said there are hose who would stop all logging in B.C. if they could. Those people don’t take into account that this province was built on the wood products in- ® dustry and still relies on logging the forests for much of its wealth. Norrington said there is a public perception that the Canadian pulp and paper industry hasn’t been doing enough to protect the environment but that just isn’t the case. “Tf you talk to a CEO in the forest company today, environmental con- cerns are number one on their agen- da. If you talk to a Ray Smith or an Adam Zimmerman, it’s the number one issue. It has to be,” said Nor- — rington. He points out that the industry is involved in an extremely-costly en- vironmental program. Mills are be- coming more efficient, they are being @ cleaned up, emissions are being reduced and there is a commitment to use recycled pulp in the paper- making process. _. He points to an agreement whereby PiacMillan Bloedel and Fletcher Challenge have agreed to purchase, at a premium, the total output of a de-inking plant to be built by Van- couver-based Newstech Recycling Ltd. in Coquitlam. The Newstech de-inking plant will manufacture 120,000 tonnes of de- inked pulp each year. Norrington Said his company plans to blend its quota of the recycled pulp in with its regular newsprint production which will likely result in a five or 10 per cent content of recycled pulp. To make a 120,000 tonnes of de- inked pulp, Newstech will need about 150,000 tonnes of old newspaper. There just isn’t enough old newsprint available in B.C. to supply the plant as it is expected that only 50,000 ton- nes of used newspaper will be avail- able in B.C. There will be approximately 30,000 tonnes of sludge left over from the process each year. This sludge is produced when fibres that are too short “drop out.” The remaining mass is made up mostly of ink. The Newstech operation, when it is on stream, will “completely solve” B.C2s newspaper recycling problem, said Norrington but the downside is that the approximately 30,000 ton- nes of sludge generated in the process will have to be disposed of. Newstech will import about two thirds of its old newspapers, probably from as far east as the Chicago area. -This means the company is also VERN PERCIVAL importing a sludge problem. “We're going to be bringing in a lot of the waste from outside to help solve a North American recycling problem. The bad part is that we're also bringing in the sludge,” said Nor- rington. The recycling movement, Nor- rington points out, got started in response to a landfill problem. But unless other uses can be found for that sludge, it will become a con- tributor to already over-burdened landfill sites. At present, much of the sludge created in North America by the de- inking process is disposed of in landfill. There is experimentation with high-temperature incineration underway and there is research being done in an attempt to use the sludge as a soil conditioner. It’s unlikely more than one newsprint de-inking plant will be built in British Columbia. The province simply doesn’t produce the volume of used paper to make recy- cling economical. “It’s not practical or economical to bring the fibre all the way back up here. The de-inking plants that are going in to North America are mainly JOHN NORRINGTON going in to the U.S. market. which we now call the urban forest,” said Nor- rington. “People don’t realize the volumes we have. In Canada, we have this huge pulp and paper industry that’s been based on virgin forests. Now there’s a big demand for recycled paper. What this means is that a lot of the paper industry is going to move down into the States where the fibre is available.” “A lot of people are saying that Canadian industry is slow to act to recycling. It’s not that we're against recycling. What we are against is be- coming a high-cost producer of a com- modity product.” The result of this, said Norrington, is that Canada, which now produces approximately 10 million tonnes of newsprint per year and supplies 70 per cent of the U.S. market, will lose some of its market share to the U.S. mills. : “Some of those mills will be Canadian owned but the jobs are going to be in the States, not in Canada. We're losing our competitive advantage through recycling. We lose our advantage because we have to bring all those newspapers in,” said Norrington. “You're seeing a swing just starting to move in the industry where I don’t know if you'll see another newsprint mill — other than upgrading existing machines — built in Canada during the next five years, while you are going to see some new ones in the States because of the fibre supply.” As old newsprint-making machines become obsolete in Canada, they will be shut down, instead of being up- dated, said Norrington, in some cases with devastating results for the com- munities they are located in. “In some cases, in Quebec and On- tario and possibly Port Alberni, Powell River and Crofton, you're talking about whole towns. You shut down two old machines in Pine Falls, Manitoba and you're wiping out a town. That’s what it means to Canadian industry.” There is little chance the trend can be reversed, said Norrington. “The recycling demand is so strong, I really don’t think we can change it.” He said Canadian companies will still make newsprint, there just won't be any expansion in the newsprint making business. There will always be a market for virgin fibre, said Norrington, albeit a smaller one. This is because fibre can only be recycled three or four times before the fibres become too short. “You have to keep feeding in virgin fibre. People who are saying they want to buy 100 per cent recycled newsprint, it’s not physically possible over a long period of time. It’s pos- sible only for a short period of time if youre on a closed system.” “Canada has had a very successful newsprint and pulp and paper in- dustry because of the virgin forests. When you make newsprint at a com- modity grade, you have to be a low- cost producer. The low cost producers in the past are the people who have had access to a relatively inexpensive fibre. That fibre has happened to be from the virgin forest.” Norrington said the Canadian pulp and paper industry has become ex- tremely efficient. Eighty per cent of the fibre it uses comes from the byproducts of sawmills. “If you go back to the 50s and 60s when throughout the province there were beehive burners, a lot of this was burned. We're now integrated. We're now using the total forest.” Norringtton said logging practices are being changed dramatically in response to public demands. While many environmentalists argue otherwise, the wood products industry insists that Canada’s forests are being managed to produce perpetual yield. _“Wood for newsprint is a renewable natural resource. In Canada it comes from nearly a million square miles of forest, 80 per cent owned by the public,” states a booklet produced by the Newsprint Information Commit- tee which is made up of repre- sentatives of North America’s largest paper producers. “The annual cut is far less than annual growth. Thus the current wood supply can be maintained in perpetuity. Mature trees unhar- vested fall prey to fire, insects, dis- ease and decay.”