-

“ 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 —

COLOR ENLARGEMENT WITH” “EVERY ROLL OF FILM

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EMPIRE SIZE aq or 4’"x6""

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