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No. 22 August 1999 News for All Interested in Featuring News, Analysis, Resources and Contacts |
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MillWatch table of contents
MillWatch No. 22 - August 1999
Electronic Paper in the Near Future for Your E-Book
Green Chemistry Award
Powell River Precipitator
Chips and Fibre
Wisconsin's PCF Tissue Mill Lost in Takeover
Skeena Cell to Go 100% ClO2
A PCF National Geographic?
Correction: No Howe Sound Sludge at Britannia Mine!
Download Zero Discharge
Bulk Office Paper Buying Club
Mill-Watch is sponsored by Reach for Unbleached! Canada to connect people and re-sources working on pulp and paper issues. Thanks this issue to Maureen Reilly, Ontario, Darlene Schanfald, Port Angeles WA, Sarah M. Vekasi, Olympia WA, Jon Stahl, Leggett CA, the Brainerd Foundation and our donors who fund this newsletter, and all those in communities working to help their mill clean up. Write to us!
Xerox and 3M have teamed up to produce a sheet of electronic paper - thin, flexible and portable - that can be written on and erased electronically thousands of times.
The display sheet is a thin piece of transparent plastic filled with tiny two-toned beads, which rotate in response to an electric charge forming a display. As well as routine office uses, Xerox is thinking about an electronic newspaper, updated via the computer, and re-used the next day. Xerox anticipates that new printers would be needed but all other computer equipment would relate to the e-paper. 3M says test products are about a year away, and may take five years to bring to market.
Meanwhile, Xerox displayed a print-on-command machine at the Canadian Booksellers Association trade fair in June. The machine, 10 metres long, can manufacture a book on demand in less than five minutes.
In the related electronic book field, Chapters bookstores will start selling the Rocket eBook in September. The eBook is book-sized with a screen and can store up to 10 novels. In Canada, Rogers Cantel is selling a competing product - the Softbook Reader - which can hold 100,000 pages and download new books over the Internet at 100 pages a minute. At present the www.softbook site only holds 448 titles, but major publishers are lining up. The Softbook's first market target is corporate use, where file-toting managers may be able to load their background material for branches or conferences into a Softbook. The US navy is considering the use of Softbooks to replace the 40 tons of documentation on submarines.
Xerox says that somehow the electronic book, the print-on-demand, and electronic paper will become compatible, along with the electronic staple which will carry files to be scanned into a computer.
These new technologies will certainly promote profound changes in the publishing and bookselling businesses. Authors will be more attracted to self-publishing, but also copyright will be under further attack. The implications for the pulp and paper industry may be as profound. Ten years from now, packaging may be the paper market with the strongest future.
* Environmental News Service; Vancouver Sun, June 1999.
Professor Terry Collins, of Carnegie Mellon University, has won a US Presidential Green Chemistry Award for his work on iron-based catalysts that enhance the activity of hydrogen peroxide in bleaching, water disinfection, and laundry industries. The National Academy of Sciences in Washington established the Green Chemistry Awards in 1995 to promote pollution prevention by recognizing innovative chemical technologies for source reduction. MillWatch featured the work of Professor Collins in our June issue in Unlocking the Secrets of Peroxide Perfection, by Jay Ritchlin.
A steam generator burst at the Georgia Pacific mill in Bellingham Washington in early July, destroying the plant and injuring four people. There was no fire and no hazardous spill.
A fire in the roof above the bleach plant in Weyerhaeuser Canada's Kamloops British Columbia kraft mill sent thick smoke over the town and closed the bleach line for repairs to pipeline and for an accident investigation by the mill.
Between 2,700 and 4,500 litres of Dombind flowed into creeks after a storage tank hose at Norampac Inc.'s pulp and paper mill at Trenton Ontario split in mid-June. The spill was discovered when dead fish showed up in the creeks, which were pumped to try and remove the black liquor. Dombind will continue to be used as a dust suppressant on Ontario country roads until the license expires in December 2000.
In June two former managers of LCP Chemicals of Brunswick, Georgia received lengthy prison sentences for repeatedly exposing workers to dangerous chemicals during the manufacture of bleach, caustic soda, hydrogen gas and hydrochloric acid and for releasing mercury and chlorine into a nearby creek. Cleanup at LCP has cost $55 million to date.
Help us keep the Log Book up-to-date -- if your local mill has an incident or accident, let MillWatch know.
In July, Pacifica Papers directors approved $12.6 million for a new electrostatic precipitator for the Powell River kraft mill recovery boiler. The project, to be completed in September 2000, will reduce particulate emissions so the mill will meet the province's Level "A" air standard.
The decision came in the midst of a hotly-contested British Columbia Environmental Appeal Board hearing into an extended air pollution permit for the recovery boiler. BC Environment had allowed the company four more years until 2002 of discharging pollution from the recovery boiler at Level B' standards. Most mills in BC already meet Level A' standards and Powell River residents objected to the exemption.
During hearings in July, Dr. Ray Copes of the BC Ministry of Health verified that in high concentrations hydrogen sulphide gas is acutely toxic, but Dr. Copes said that small particulate' is especially dangerous.
The hearing also heard neurologist Dr. Alan Hirsch of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation of Chicago testify that air pollution from pulp mills can make people physically and psychologically sick. Hirsch stated that certain bad odours, including hydrogen sulphide (H2S), the common rotten egg' smell associated with pulp mills, can cause permanent and irreversible damage as a result of both short-term, peak exposures and repeated, low-level exposure.
* Powell River residents, Powell River Papertales, July 1999
Louisiana-Pacific announced in April that, along with its Canadian subsidiaries, it would build four new mills in northeastern British Columbia for $250 million. The project would include an oriented strand board (OSB) mill, a veneer mill, a laminated veneer lumber (LVL) plant, and an I-Joist mill. Meanwhile, continuing losses and difficult market conditions had caused Louisiana-Pacific to consider layoffs and a shut-down at the world's first closed-loop, no-effluent, chlorine-free pulp mill in BC, Suwyn said. However, government aid and union concessions mean the Chetwynd BCTMP pulp mill will continue to operate.
Louisiana-Pacific also committed about $25 million (Canadian) in upgrades at its BC mills over the next two years.
* LP, April 1999
Wisconsin Tissue's plans to build a chlorine free $180 million tissue manufacturing plant along the Roanoke River in North Carolina this fall were scraped when the company was acquired by Georgia Pacific. The announcement came just as environmentalists were celebrating their victory in convincing the company to drop their plans for using sodium hypochlorite as the bleaching agent at the new 100% recycling mill. Wisconsin Tissue had announced in late May that the new mill would be chlorine free, after a strong campaign by environmentalists who raised concerns about chlorine compounds in the river and the release of chloroform, a known carcinogen. The US EPA had agreed that chlorine-free bleaching was required.
Contact Rick Spencer, EarthCulture, (336)685-7012
Th e British Columbia government will invest $110 million for capital expenditures at the Skeena Cellulose Inc. pulp mill at Prince Rupert, BC. The mill is majority owned by the government with minority shares held by the Pulp Paper and Woodworkers of Canada and the Toronto Dominion Bank. Patrick O'Brien of Skeena Cell says the mill will be getting a new chlorine dioxide generator among other upgrades.
Skeena Cellulose will first seek certification from the International Standards Organization for all its forest holdings. Manager Archie MacDonald says seeking green certification will safeguard the mill's European market.
International environmental groups from five countries are calling on the National Geographic to launch a responsible paper purchasing program to protect forests and their inhabitants around the world. The call emphasizes using recycled and totally chlorine free paper and reducing magazine size to lower consumption.
Al Strang of Howe Sound Pulp & Paper corrects last month's MillWatch report about the use of Howe Sound sludge to try and stop acid mine drainage at Britannia Mine north of Vancouver, one of the largest water pollution sources in North America. Sludge from Howe Sound P&P is not and never has been used at Britannia. Environment Canada did run a pilot plant to treat the acid mine drainage using a combination of lime and ash from our power boiler. Only six 45 gal. drums of ash went to Britannia, and three were returned full. The study has never gone beyond that pilot stage. No sludge at all was involved.
The latest scheme for dealing with the acid generating pit is to fill it with contaminated soils from BC's Lower Mainland, build a water treatment plant to catch and deacidify the leachate, and put the sludge from the treatment plant back in the mine along with the contaminated soils. Funds from the dump fees would also be used to set up a $25 million trust fund to run the treatment plant once the mine is full and the landfill operation closes.
* Al Strang, HSPP, & Georgia Strait, June 1999
Last October, Reach for Unbleached! and Green peace International released Zero Discharge: Technological Progress Towards Eliminating Kraft Pulp Mill Liquid Effluent, Minimising Remaining Waste Streams And Advancing Worker Safety by Jay Ritchlin and Paul Johnston. This report is the result of an intensive year-long review and analysis of the available literature on pulp bleaching technology, environmental impacts of pulp mills, worker health and safety, product quality, closed loop process engineering, and the economic effects of environmental investments. Based on extensive scientific evidence, the report concludes that oxygen based bleaching chemicals present the least hazard, both immediately and long term, for workers and the community and that oxygen based, closed loop kraft pulp mills are the best route forward to a successful and ecologically responsible kraft pulp industry.
Copies of Zero Discharge are now downloadable for free in pdf format from the Greenpeace International website at: www.greenpeace.org/~toxics/reports/zerodisch.pdf. They can also be ordered in hard copy from Reach for Unbleached! for $8.00 incl. shipping; $12.00 Canadian ($8.00 US) for international orders; ph (604)879-2992; email:ritchlin@rfu.org.
Reach for Unbleached! and Paper Choice will place the sixth bulk order of chlorine free, recycled office paper on October 1, 1999.
The Paper: Rolland New Life Dual Purpose
80% recycled content with 60% post consumer
80% Processed Chlorine Free (PCF) & 20% Totally Chlorine Free (TCF)
Excellent copy and printer paper
The Price: $58.25/ case of 8.5 x 11 (plus GST, PST, freight)
Minimum order one box (5000 sheets)
Payment must be made in advance to Reach for Unbleached!
Why a Bulk Buying Club? The price of environmentally sound paper has been a barrier to its success on the market. The goals of the Buying Club are threefold:
Lower the price of the paper
Prove to manufacturers that a market exists
Encourage BC mills to make this type of paper
Be a part of this innovative club and place your order soon! For more info, phone/fax: (250)935-6992 or info@rfu.org