Writer's Profile

A Japanese pensioner living in Yokohama. Retired in the early 2000s.
Worked with the pulp and paper industry for the entire business career, the first half in a trading house and the last half in a paper manufacturer in Japan.

Stationed in New York office in the 1970s. A very challenging decade for America, when President Nixon was reelected; the Yom Kipper War broke out followed by Arab's oil embargo; crude oil prices quadrupled; the Watergate Affairs forced President Nixon to step down; Dr. Henry Kissinger ended the Vietnam War and opened diplomacy with China; his shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East eased the tension in the area; Governor Carter of Georgia became the President.

For your reference, using less paper does not mean saving trees. Trees cut down in North American forests, for example, are carried to sawmills, where lumbers are produced for housing. Only small portion of timber not suitable for lumbers, or sawmill residues, are chipped into small pieces and carried to pulp mills, where pulp and paper are produced. Sawmills try to maximize the lumber yield to get more profit. In other words, pulp and paper are made of sawmill residues. As long as wooden houses are built, trees continue to be logged no matter how less you consume paper products or how much you use recycled paper. Chinese paperboard makers are known as using recovered papers and recognized as green companies. However, most of the recovered papers are transported thousands of miles from the East and West Coast of America and Europe. Guardian Media Group of the U.K. announced in January 2010 that they would switch some of newsprint supply to a low carbon Norwegian mill from recycled mill in the U.K., which emits 100 times more CO2 per ton of paper.


April 2010