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Plastic Paper
Stop making books out of trees.
By Karen E. Steen
August/September 2002
Computers, PDAs, and the e-book have failed to curb our paper glut. The
solution, according to architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart,
is paper made of plastic, an idea that gets a very tactile showcase in their
new book, Cradle to Cradle. The pages and cover are made of polypropylene,
a petroleum-based polymer, and act as a prototype for a material that encapsulates
the book's message: all waste can feed the planet if we separate it into
"biological nutrients," which can be composted or safely burned
for fuel, or "technical nutrients," which can be made into new
products. Although the polymer isn't a true cradle-to-cradle product yet,
Braungart is working on the technology. For now, it serves as a metaphor.
"We are directly calling for the end of using trees for making paper,"
he says. So how, exactly, will petroleum-based paper be better for the Earth
than wood pulp? Let Braungart count the ways:
First, we simply don't have enough trees on the planet to fulfill our
paper needs. "If people just used 100 kilograms of paper annually,
there wouldn't be enough trees on this planet--and the average paper use
of a U.S. citizen is about 403 kilograms," he says.
Second, paper today isn't what we think it is. Braungart analyzed the content
of various papers and found "a highly complex mixture of pulp with
other paper chemicals. Paper is not paper anymore, especially if you look
at high-quality paper like Metropolis magazine. It's just a composite
with some pulp in it and coated with plastic." (When asked what Metropolis
contains, Braungart says, "It has chromium, it has lead, it has cobalt,
it has selenium. It's a sewer of toxic chemicals.")
Third, current paper-recycling technologies aren't as green as we think.
"Because print chemicals are not designed for recycling, it's creating
a lot of hazardous-waste problems," Braungart says. This could be solved,
he says, if manufacturers kept biological nutrients like wood pulp separate
from technical nutrients like polymers and chemicals. An all-polymer paper
could be recycled without creating hazardous by-products.
Fourth, the quality of a polymer paper--recycled in such a pure manner--would
be better, and it would last longer. White paper would be recycled into
white paper (instead of gray or speckled earth-tone) without the use of
bleach.
Fifth is ink. The current green thinking is to use soy-based ink, but Braungart
says recycling it disperses chemicals into the environment. Instead he foresees
a process that washes ink off the page and separates pigments so that they
can be reused again and again without going into the water stream.
Sixth, a highly engineered book would be safer to use. According to Braungart,
books "off-gas," which means they constantly release hazardous
fumes. "Books are not designed to be used inside," he says. "You
should write on every book: 'Please only read this carefully outside of
your room.'"
In Braungart's ideal world, plastic paper would be a refillable package.
"Let's think about paper use instead of paper consumption,"
he says. "In the future there would be a deposit on newspapers: people
would bring them back and just buy the service of reading them. |
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