Man made forest to combat global warming

A BBC report says that 100,000 artificial trees will be installed to soak up carbon emissions. This is one of the three methods deployed to reduce carbon emissions and to avoid dangerous climate change. These artificial trees capture CO2 from the atmosphere via a filter . The CO2 is captured and stored. One such tree is the size of a sea freight container and can remove thousands of times more CO2 than the equivalent sized real tree.


Read more in
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8223528.stm

FSC running out of steam?

Forest Stewardship Council is facing obstacles in convincing smaller forestry owners and those of the developing countries. According to the latest UN report, the rate of growth of  global ceritfied forest has dropped dramatically during the last three years.
Find out more in  http://deadtreeedition.blogspot.com/2009/08/certified-forestry-is-in-trouble-un.html

Italian papers in China

On the 18th July I attended a paper introduction seminar hosted by Cordenons paper mill in Hangzhou, a beautiful scenic city in China. The sales manager of the Italian paper mill, Philipe Virey, spoke on the products . The presence of the CEO ,Ottavio Zucca, underscored the importance of Asia especially China the awakened giant. About fifty people came from nearby Hong Kong and Taiwan, and not so near Singapore, Indonesia , Malaysia and Phillipines. But the biggest contingent in numbers is China with its many paper dealers in various cities. I met a Malaysian lady settled in Shenzhen selling fancy papers but originally from Klang. She joked and spoke in her made-in-China mandarin interspersed with her Malaysian lah English and the occasional Hokkien outbursts.She claimed to have met me before in Johore.
The other interesting episode was meeting the the owners of Star Papers in Phillipines. When I joined the paper line in the eighties this company was making headlines to me importing unbelievable tons of US fancy papers and was like the ONE fancy specialist in that Catholic majority Asian country[another point of fascination]. After almost thirty years I get to meet the father and son team and couldn't be more impressed by their humility.

The papers that were introduced were unique.
So...Silk........So...Jean........So...Wool
So...Silk is an amazing paper that feels like garment material, silk. The paper goes through a special making process that shapes the material pliable and soft and yet strong enough for offset printing and other printing processes. Actually it contains silk!.

So...Jean. yes you guessed it . The paper is made partly from cotton. It looks exactly like a jean material.
The felt marked surface texture feels and looks like jean cotton. If you print a pair of Levis on it you would probably want to wear it.

So...wool. Yep! contains a bit of wool. Its touch is rough like the Merino sheep wool and yet printed colours
on it looked great.

I might add ; they are all FSC ,a must added feature in the western countries.

The seminar was great. The new papers and the interesting people in a picturesque surrounding made it very memorable. Following are a couple of photos taken there.

Participants at Cordenons Paper Seminar

Serious lecture stuff!

The hotel we stayed at

Photo taken near hotel about six in the evening

PEFC in Argos catalog

Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification [PEFC] reached a significant achievement in UK with 18 million copies of Argos carrying PEFC logo and announcing that the catalogue is printed on paper from responsibly managed forest. Argos is a prominent shopping catalogue touching 17millon households in UK.

Commenting on the award, Laurence Singer, Corporate Responsibility Manager, Home Retail Group, said “As a leading high street retailer committed to sourcing from sustainably-managed forests, Argos is proud to demonstrate its support for responsible forest management by being able to provide our customers with the assurance that the source material for our catalogues can be traced back to forests certified to a credible certification standard such as PEFC’s”.

http://news.paperindex.com/Recycling_Environment/PEFC_celebrates_Argos_endorsement-1/

We do not hear a lot of PEFC in Malaysia but just recently Malaysia has joined as a member to
this Pan European Forest Certification scheme

Global warming

Glaciers in North America are definitely melting according scientists reported in Bloomberg.

"Three glaciers in different climate zones of the U.S. Northwest have shrunk rapidly since 1989, confirming the impact of global warming on their decline, the government said in a report."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aEGcNnT1qzuw

Shrinking glaciers threaten low-lying cities and coastal areas. Salmon and trout are affected as they prefer cold , highly oxygenated waters. In Asia vanshing glaciers in the Himalayan mountains will disrupt water supplies to India and China.

Indiscriminate deforestation is a major cause of global warming. Let us support environment friendly papers like recycled, FSC,PEFC and so on.

Paper price drop

Surprise surprise!. Around the world , pulp price is on the rise steadily and yet we hear that coated paper prices in the USA is dropping farther and farther. It was so bad a few months back that some mills had started making uncoated freesheet [woodfree] on coated papermaking machines. Even RISI an authority in paper trends predicted that the 3rd quarter would see coated paper index decline to low USD900 but the lo and behold RISI July figures are officially USD770 in the US market.

This negative fall is probably a reflection on the extent of the recession in the US.

Read more in http://deadtreeedition.blogspot.com/2009/08/coated-paper-prices-can-they-get-uglier.html