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Paper-making has centuries of history and many technologies.  Modern paper-making, from wood, is only about a century old.  Wood is a renewable resource and paper uses lower quality trees than those used for lumber and veneer.  So, it’s a critical market in the effort to manage forests as well as possible.  Addtionally, wood raw materials comes from an intact ecosystem and actually helps maintain those forested ecosystems. 

Major Points

• Basic process is tree harvest, log debarking & chipped, cooking chips to pulp, diluting pulp and spraying onto a large screen, water removal and drying, winding, rewinding, roll-cutting, and finally, loading onto trucks. 
• Mills receive both roundwood (pulpwood) or chips in vans.  Hauling distance can be over 100 miles but it typically much less.  A large pulp mill may receive as many as 100 trucks per day.
• Delivered chips are fed into the pulp mill.  Delivered logs must first be debarked and then chipped.  Pulp mills are separate operations from a paper mill.  They are sometimes in the same location and sometimes not.  Dry bales of wood pulp are globally traded to help supply paper mills that don't have a pulp mill on-site.
• The pulp mill "cooks" the chips into a pulpy soup.  "Krafting" is a recipe involving heat, chemicals, and pressure".  The process breaks down the lignin, or phenol-based glue.  The lignin is not used for paper but, rather, is further processed into many chemicals.  "Thermo-mechanical" is a different process using heat and grinding to separate the lignin from the cellulose. .
• In the paper mill, the pulp is mixed to a slurry of 99% water and sprayed onto a fine screen.  The spray is tightly metered.  The water is then extracted from the screen and the layer of paper is sent through a series of dryers, required a lot of heat.  At the far end of the dryers, the paper sheet is wound into multi-ton rolls.
• Sometimes, the large rolls are re-wound to add a coating, often one accepts ink well, for printing.  
• The large rolls are cut to customer length, labelled, and loaded onto waiting semi-truck vans.
• Large amounts of water are used in paper-making.  The process water is treated, several stages, and the released back into the river or lake.  The water is usually as clean or cleaner than the incoming water.
• Large amounts of heat are generated, fueled by "waste streams" such a bark, low quality roundwood bought to feed boilers, and natural gas.

Alternative Raw Materials

Potentially, and historically, paper can be made of many materials.  One popular suggestion is hemp.  Hemp can be used to make paper, along with many other fibers.  However, how much hemp would be needed?  How many acres of hemp agriculture would be needed?  How many acres of forest might be cleared in order to grow that hemp?  And, is that good resource management?

Let's do some napkin calculations.  One large pulp & paper will use a million cords of wood per year.  That roughly translates to 33,300 acres of forest.  That forest is either thinned or regenerated (clearcut, shelterwood, et al.).  But, it remains as forest for the future.  The equivalent amount of hemp would require about 287,000 acres, assuming a production of 8 dry tons per acre.  That acreage would be from an agricultural ecosystem, which provides far fewer ecological goods and services than a forest.  And then, farmers will grow crops that will make them the most money. How competitive would hemp be against corn, soybeans, and other crops?  If raw material could be obtained for less cost, then pulp and paper mills would use them.  Chances are, wood is the least expensive raw material and, thankfully, it's a renewable resource, with little or no inputs, from an ecosystem that provide many additional benefits.  Having a market for smaller size and lower quality wood provides foresters with a tool to better manage forests.  Wood products in general, and paper products specifically, are the most environmentally-friendly products at our disposal.     

The "Two Sides" organization, a trade industry group, has a website talks about paper, paper production, forest resources, and dispels many of the myths about wood-based paper.  It's a good resouce for teachers.

The Michigan Forests Forever website has a section about "wood products" that provides additional information.

 

BeLeaf It or Not! Video Production  The purpose for these videos is to INTRODUCE a few concepts for each episode topic.  They are meant to be light-hearted and entertaining.   Yet, the intention is to have both feet on solid science ground (biological, economic, social, et al.).  We acknowledge that many of the topics are introduced or reinforced in school curricula at the fourth through seventh grades.  So, these students, and their teachers, are the primary target audience.  All of these topics can be more fully explored within the classroom setting or, in some case, be explored IN THE WOODS!  With this in mind, these support pages are embedded into the Michigan Forests Forever website, which already houses a wide range of information about Michigan forests, designed for use by teachers. This entire project cost about $100,000.  No small amount, of course.  The primary authors were Bill Cook, Georgia Peterson, and James Ford.  Additionally, most of the episode scripts were either drafted and/or reviewed by cooperating foresters, biologists, teachers, and other experts.  If you're curious about who helped produced these videos, visit the "credits" page.

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