-

“  Pege2y Apeil 15,1979 -SundiyNews

| speckulations

Ym very interested in newsprint tecycling. This
practice, ‘unknown in British Columbia except for

the manufacture of objects like cardboard boxes -

and gyproc- ‘coatings, is a thing of the future.
,.B.C.s forest companies still find it cheaper to cut
down trees, make the newsprint and sell it to

newspapers.

After you, the reader, are
through with the newsprint,
the majority of it ends up
being cither buried as
landfill or else burned. Only
a small portion is recycled.
This is, in my mind, a very
inefficient use of the forest
resource. We are living in
halcyon days here in-British
Columbia but they won't last

forever. We must face the —

fact that the forest com-
panies are ripping - off the
tree cover three times that of

the regrowth rate. This state
of affairs cannot continue or

we will be deforested soon.
And what will we have to sell
then?

So, in Pomona, California
I visited the Garden State
Paper Company. This $140
million plant. recycles
newsprint. But it does not
_ produce egg .cattons and
beaver board, it uces

_ newsprint. The ‘product that
emerges from the paper
‘machine i is to all intents and

"" 1139 Lonsdale Avenue,
North Vancouver, 8.C.
‘V7M 2H4

OFFICEINEWS
(604) 980-0511

° CLASSIFIED
986-6222

CIRCULATION
986-1337

@u sm

Publisher
Peter Speck

Associate Publisher
Bob Graham

Editor-in-Chief
Noel

da. and distributed to every
door on the North Shore
Second Class Mail Registration
Number 3885

VERIFIED CIRCULATION

48,478 |

Entire content 21079
Free Prees Lid. All rights

purposes identical with the
type of virgin newsprint that

we buy here in B.C. It is a |

very interesting process.

An indication of the ef-

ficiency of the plant might |

be gained from the fact that
out of 345 tons. of used,

bundled, newsprint the plant
is able to produce 305 tons of
like-new newsprint, suitable
for newspaper use. .

THETOUR —
Garden State - vice-
president for -sales, Dick
Crane, kindly took me
through the large operation.
The newsprint is collected
through a series of recycling —
depots and trucked to
Garden-—States’ storage
facilities. They have about
two and one half months’
scrap paper’ in storage, and
Crane says that one of the
key ingredients in any

newsprint recycling scheme

is to make sure the inventory
of used paper never falls
below necessary levels. '
“This is a continuous
production process,” he
says, “and if the machines
have to stop because there is
no scrap newsprint it takés a
long time and a lot of energy
to get the whole-thing going
again.” So Garden State is
involved not only in the

production of paper but also

in the collection of the scrap
through a network of
recycling depot companies
in which Garden State
maintains a financial in-
terest.

The Korean market is the
biggest foreign buyer right
now,” says Crane. “But the
Japanese and the other
countries also are actively
interested in buying
newsprint.

MARVEL OF
ECONOMY

The plant is a marvel of
economy. Front-end loaders
scoop the paper into a large
travelling clamshell bucket,
which -transfers the
newsprint from a storage
warchouse to a large hopper,
much like ones used in
distilleries. ‘Dirty’ water,
piped from later stages of
cleaning, is added to the
newsprint, along with
certain chemicals and a giant
rotor in the bottom of the
hopper quickly reduces the
newsprint to a mushy pulp
about the consistency of
lumpy oatmeal.

‘Fach step of the process
involves the removal of
impurities as well as ink from
the newsprint. Garden State
collects about a 50 gallon
drum of staples and bits of
glass and small objects every
day from the waste paper.

WASHING

The mushy pulp, very
liquid in consistency, is then

by Peter Speck.

serving our ‘capital’

subjected to a series. of
treatments. The process is

primarily a washing process

to separate. the newsprint

_ back into its original fibres
‘and to float off the ink. This

‘The plant_uses s about nine
million gallons of water per

day, six million of which is ©

recycled and three million of
which. is- sent to the Los
Angeles sewage system.

PAPER AGAIN.

The pulp fibres,
being broken down and
washed, are reconstituted

through what appears to be -

standard . -paper-mill
machinery. Water is ex-
tracted from the fibres and
they are pressed together in

a mat which is fed through a

_ series of rollers and even- .

tually, presto, a sheet of
clean white newsprint thirty
feet wide emerges from the
end, to be wound on a giant
roll and then slit and

rewound for the mills’ in-|

dividual customers.
“Production from the mill is
sold out for a long time to
come,” says Crane.

It is estimated that the mill
would require over a million
acres of timber if it were
producing newsprint from
trees, as. the forest com-
panies in B.C. do. B.C.
exports over 84 per cent of
its newsprint production,
which amounts to the
astronomical amount of over
1% million tons per year. To
put this in perspective, it
takes about fourteen trees to
make a ton of newsprint, and
there are about forty trees
per acre. The production of
newsprint in the province of
B.C.—not counting the
export of logs or the
production of lumber and
other wood uses, climinates
about 626,000 acres of forest
each year—ang these trees,
despite forest company
propaganda, take a_ long
time to re-grow. If they are
replanted.

The pressure of other
currencies on B.C.'s natural
resources is very high now. I
don't want my children to
grow up with a heritage of

ravaged hillsides and
blackened stumps. From
herring to halibut, fish,’

forests and minerals, we
have been entrusted with
great riches. But they are not
inexhaustible.

I pray that our govern-
ments have the integrity to
preserve our “capital” in the
face of the economic on-
slaught enveloping us.

..because every
child has the
right to smile

yaa

I etr ates

‘Yoarrd
othe Ghes

Unicef Canada G

after —

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