Domtar Goes Beyond Sustainability
Over at GreenBiz is a nice story on Domtar. Not only have they been
FSC-certified for more than 10 years, but the paper manufacturer is taking
sustainability to the next level by taking the waste produced during pulping
and seeing what other types of products they can make from it.
Take, for example, lignin. Lignin is an organic material that
comprises about 15-35% of wood, depending on the species of tree. It's
purpose in a tree is to bind fibers of cellulose together, and one of the
functions of the pulping process is to remove the lignin. But what to do with
it? Some mills use it as fuel for their production facilities, but Domtar is
working on developing lignin for use as an alternative to petroleum.
Its first commercial-scale lignin separation plant in Plymouth,
N.C., began producing Domtar's BioChoice lignin in February and is targeting
eventual production of 75 tons per day. The material could be used for
creating more environmentally sensitive asphalt, as one example...
The investment in the facility began back in 2010 and it was
partially supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and
the U.S. Department of Energy, through the Biomass Research and Development
Initiative.
...
Domtar is also at the forefront of an effort to commercialize an eco-friendly
product called nanocrystalline cellulose, which is extracted from tiny wood
pulp fiber particles. It is incredibly strong and lightweight, and could be
used as a material for aerospace and auto components, textiles or
bio-composites (such as bone replacement).
(Bone replacement? I can see the e-mail signature now:
"Save a tree! Go boneless!")
Anyway, kudos to Domtar for going beyond mere sustainability.
I'll Drink to That
Here's a new word to add to your vocabulary:
"philanthropub." Via the Sustainable Business Forum, a philanthropub is a
drinking establishment that--a la Newman's Own--donates all of its profits to
charity. For example, there is Washington, DC's Cause, where "having a good time helps a
great cause." The establishment aims to provide 3 to 5 charitable
organizations each quarter, and all of the bar's net profits go to those
charities. (To answer one burning question, no, one's bar tab is not, as a
result, tax-deductible as a charitable donation. Would that it were...)
A great idea, but how is it as a pub? I have not been there
(yet...don't know if a trip to D.C. is in the offing any time soon) but they
got good reviews from the Washington
Post and Yelp!-ers seem to be enthusiastic.
Other establishments are on the way. The Oregon Public House in Portland is opening soon,
and the owners have liaised with local charity organizations and will
likewise donate 100% of its net profits. I don't know if this is the future
of the hospitality industry, but I do like the idea.
If you've got green news, or know of a green event you'd like to
see listed on Going Green,
burn a few electrons and email me, Richard Romano, Managing
Editor, with all the details.
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National Geographic
Explores Their World
Over at Dead Tree Edition, our friend Mr. Tree (if that is
his name) turns the microphone over to Frank Locantore, Project Director of
the Green America Better Paper Project, to discuss the highlights of a new study (pdf) commissioned by the National
Geographic Society and conducted by Environ that attempts to gauge the environmental
impacts of virgin vs. recycled paper. The conclusions?
1) The relative environmental impacts for deinked pulp are
better than those for kraft or mechanical pulp in all environmental
categories studied.
2) It isn't demonstrated that it is better to use recovered
fiber in non-magazine paper.
3) There are currently no significant limitations on recovered
paper supply.
Well, you can see what would happen if the paper and printing
industries switched over to 100% recycled paper--after all, recycled paper
has to start out as virgin pulp. Also, too: you can only recycle the same
pulp so many times (at most five times, it is generally estimated) before the
fibers become unusable. So, there's that. And what I would argue is an
important issue for a magazine like National
Geographic: is there any impact on the quality of the product?
The hallmark of National
Geographic is the quality of its photography and the printing of
that photography. Is there a compromise in using recycled paper? (I'm not
saying that there is, I am just putting the question out there.)
One qualification in the study caught my attention:
Other impact categories, such as biodiversity and carbon
sequestration were not included, because supporting data and/or impact
characterization factors could not be obtained within the project scope and
available resources
Another important point--covered ad nauseam in this space--is that reducing
the demand for virgin pulp may have a significant negative impact on certain elements of the
environment, namely forests, forest health, biodiversity, etc. Trees used for
wood products are crops and, like any crop, can be sustainably or
unsustainably managed. Sustainably managed forests preserve forest health and
biodiversity. The alternative--if demand drops to such a point that it is not
profitable to manage the forests at all--is for forestry products companies
to sell the forestland, where it could very well be destroyed for real estate
development or other uses that don't include trees. Not that that is
inevitable, but land has value, of course, and that value can either reside
in the trees--or what replaces the trees.
Anyway, not to dis recycled paper; I am all in favor of using as
much of it as is practical, but there are other issues involved. And given
the perilous state of the paper and print publishing industries today, I'm
not sure they are the biggest contributors to our environmental problems.
Need Green Ideas? Look to Other Industries
Across the pond, Printweek
has a jolly good bit of advice for those in the commercial printing
industry seeking to "go green": look at other industries and market
sectors for ideas. And well why not? As the author points out, print touches
just about every other industry in some way--print clients are just about
everywhere.
For, within those client sectors, there are multiple lessons for
print to learn and apply when it comes to greening up its processes and
procedures. On the face of it, they may seem ill fitting or irrelevant to
print's particular parameters of business. However, looking beyond the
sector-specific elements there are universal benefits to be drawn for all.
How can environmental sustainability initiatives adopted by such
diverse sectors as retail, automotive, real estate, consumer goods
manufacturing, and logistics be applied to printing? It's not as difficult as
you may think. After all, we borrow ideas in many other areas--sales,
marketing PR, and so on--why not look to other, disparate companies for ideas
with sustainability?
Long Distance Voyager
On September 5, 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1, whose primary mission was to fly
by Jupiter and Saturn and their respective moons. It visited Jupiter in 1979
and Saturn a year later, becoming the first spacecraft to photograph these systems.
What you may not know is that Voyager
1 is going, and it's still sending back data. And, in fact, it
has become the first manmade object to leave the Solar System. In a study
soon to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers say (via
SciTchDaily):
On August 25, 2012, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft measured drastic
changes in radiation levels, more than 11 billion miles from the Sun.
Anomalous cosmic rays, which are cosmic rays trapped in the outer
heliosphere, all but vanished, dropping to less than 1 percent of previous
amounts. At the same time, galactic cosmic rays--cosmic radiation from
outside of the solar system--spiked to levels not seen since Voyager's
launch, with intensities as much as twice previous levels.
It is officially outside the influence of the Sun, but
scientists are still debating whether the probe is now officially in
interstellar space, or if it is some hitherto unknown region of space between
the heliosphere (essentially, the Solar System) and interstellar space.
"Within just a few days, the heliospheric intensity of
trapped radiation decreased, and the cosmic ray intensity went up as you
would expect if it exited the heliosphere," said Bill Webber, professor
emeritus of astronomy at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. He calls
this transition boundary the "heliocliff."
Now all we have to worry about is when it collides with an alien
intelligence and comes back as V'ger.
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