Interesting article from Andy about the dilemma on whether to recyle paper or not. I want to contribute by adding to the discussion a couple of facts: Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with a retired paper man, that is, a guy who worked in the paper industry for his entire professional career. He is a chemical engineer who worked in Georgia for a huge paper mill. I asked him precisely about the issue of recycled paper, because I am interested in the topic. What he told me was very illuminating. It turns out that paper mills do use and look for providers of paper to recycle, which they include in their industrial processes, but they also need fresh pulp from trees, as recyclable paper can't be used for all of the paper grades and qualitites that the industry produces. >From this I concluded two things. First, that for the paper industry to incorporate recyclable paper into their industrial processes, it must mean that it is economically attractive to them, i.e., they must be better off by recycling paper than by using just fresh pulp from trees. Second, that as long as the paper industry produces -with current technology- all the gamut of paper products that it manufactures, there will be a need for trees to be turned into pulp for paper manufacturing. That is, you can't get away with just recycling paper. Hence, it is economically valuable to recycle paper, but the more paper we use, the more trees will be consumed too. That is, it is good to recycle paper, but not because we recycle paper we should feel free to be frugal about paper consumption. That is, from the sustainable point of view, we are better off recycling paper, and whatever paper we use, we should try to maximize its use, say by writting on both sides, and giving paper different uses before recycling it. The other fact that I want to point out is what one can learn at the Baltimore Aquarium regarding tropical forests. There is a very sobering billboard at the aquarium that shows the amount of tropical forests in the planet as a function of time, and what one notices is a steady decrease in the planetary tropical forest resources. The aquarium also makes an extrapolation of how we will, as a species, eliminate all tropical forests by the end of this century at the rate at which we are currently exploiting the tropical forests. Not a pretty sight. Can you guess one of the industries that uses trees from the tropics? Right, the paper industry. So, there is an inverse relation between paper production and tropical forests. The more paper we consume, the less tropical forests we have. >From here, I conclude that if we didn't recycle paper, the paper industry would have to substitute recyclable paper as part of its raw materials by fresh tree pulp on top of the fresh tree pulp that it already consumes in order for it to meet the market demand. This further accelerates the depletion of tropical forests which brings its corresponding impact on global warming, etc. Also, it would be good to find out at what rate we can consume paper so that we can give the tropical forests enough time to recover. You draw your own conclusions as to whether or not it is a good idea to recycle paper. Cheers! Alfredo ____________________________________________________________________________________ TV dinner still cooling? Check out "Tonight's Picks" on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/