MillWatch No. 23 October 1999 News for All Interested in Clean Pulp and Paper Production Featuring News, Analysis, Resources and Contacts

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MillWatch table of contents

MillWatch No. 23 - October 1999

First FSC Certified Paper for American Market
Life Cycle Analysis: India's 5-Leaf Award
Workers Testify Mill Uses Job Blackmail
Bulk Office Paper Buying Club
Port Angeles Cleanup Update
Action on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals
Mysterious Fecal Pathogens in Domtar Sludge

Mill-Watch is sponsored by Reach for Unbleached! Canada to connect people and re-sources working on pulp and paper issues with funding from the Brainerd Foundation and our donors. Thanks to all those in communities working to help their mill clean up. Write to us!

The Forest Stewardship Council, working on sorely-needed certification standards for BC forest products, is considering a system whereby paper products could contain a combination of recycled fibre (of unknown origin), uncertified virgin fibre, and a percentage of FSC-certified wood fibre content. The council notes: "...FSC must not be distracted from its main purpose which is to encourage well managed forests. Recycled fibre already has a sound environmental image. It does not need an endorsement from FSC. There is no problem promoting products with a high recycled content whereas convincing consumers that products made from virgin fibre can be environmentally sound is still extremely difficult."

Meanwhile, Lyons Falls Pulp & Paper in New York has produced the first letterhead-style business paper made from pulp that originated in certified, well-managed forests. The stationery stock is the first to bear the watermark logo of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international nonprofit organization that has established the world's most strongly supported standards for sustainable forest management. Only those wood and paper products originating in FSC-certified forests can bear the FSC trademark logo in the marketplace.

Lyons Falls offers the FSC watermark in an Office Correspondence package, including a cover weight for business cards, cover stock and various stationery products. Other than the FSC watermark, Lyons Falls Director of research and development Craig Updike said customers will not notice any difference in the FSC-certified paper.

"The paper is still paper," he said. "The product is mainstream in its colour scheme ... it's what's behind it that is special, and that is the FSC certification."

Lyons Falls is also certified by the Chlorine-Free Products Association.

*June 1999

"If the GRP [Green Rating Project] has convinced me of anything, once again, it is that India's biggest strength is its democracy. It gives the people the chance to organise themselves, protest, push, create and change." -Anil Agarwal, Director, Centre for Science and Environment

This quote summarizes the most heartening conclusion of India's first, and oldest, environmental group's most recent project. The Centre for Science and the Environment (CSE) recently developed the Green Rating Project (GRP) to evaluate the ecological performance of India's 31 pulp mills and assign a rating from one to five leaves (worst to best environmental performer).

The ultimate conclusion: "Not one mill deserved a five or four leaves rating. Only two companies scraped into the three leaves category. As many as 12 mills were in the very poor, one leaf category."

The Green Rating Project, culminating in this report and its expose of organized, motivated and hard working activists throughout India also serves as an excellent reminder to environmentalists in the developed industrial nations that we have colleagues in the developing world. There is a wonderful opportunity to share information, learn from each other and stay ahead of economic and industrial trends that put our collective work at risk.

While the results of the GRP are reassuring in regards to the useful role of community activism and do indicate that there has been some recognition of environmental issues at the highest levels of the Indian pulp industry, the actual news for the environment was not all that good.

The GRP utilised a Life Cycle Analysis. The main findings of the report were:

• Good environment equals good business. There is a 60% likelihood of a mill with fairly good environmental performance churning out profits.
• Product diversity means more pollution. Especially in India's old, technologically underdeveloped mills, switching production from product to product creates inefficiency and waste.
• Inefficient fibre, water, energy and chemical use threaten resources and the environment.

Fibre: The country's hardwood forests are being rapidly depleted and mills are starting to move to the last remaining reserves of natural bamboo. Fibre efficiency is 32.4%, compared to a world average of 52.5%;

Water: Indian mills use an average of 250-300 m3 of water per tonne of paper compared to a global average of 55 m3/t;

Energy: India's average energy consumption is 41.5 GJ/t, compared to 15.2 GJ/t as a world average;

Chemicals: Many companies do not use the common practice of recycling pulping chemicals. Modern techniques to minimise the need for bleaching chemicals are not in place, and most companies still use chlorine gas, creating highly toxic dioxin and furan compounds. Average chlorine consumption for Indian mills is 100 kg/t, while the report states that zero chlorine use is in place elsewhere.

• Regulatory oversight is "dubious." Industry consultants advise the government on whether mills are in compliance. Government owned industries get exemptions from environmental laws and have monopolies on certain raw materials. Regulatory loopholes grant operating permits to uninspected facilities and even facilities expressly forbidden to operate continue to do so.
• The views of local communities are critical for assessing the impact of pollution. CSE found that community perceptions are an essential piece of data for determining if a mill's pollution is over the carrying capacity of the local environment.

Despite the dismal state of India's pulp industry in terms of environmental impacts, and the discovery of loopholes and lack of enforcement in India's environmental regulations, there is good news in this report (see: http://oneworld.org/cse/index.html or the journal Down To Earth, Vol. 8, No 5 for full details). The good news centres around the fact that civil society --- NGOs, local citizens, and various levels of government, from village councils to the United Nations -- were able to convince an industry largely immune from actual regulatory interference that caring about the environment and participating openly in the process would be good business.

D.K. Biswas, Chairperson of India's Central Pollution Control Board makes the point quite nicely. "Pollution is too serious a problem to be left for the government alone ... I want to commend CSE for starting a project in which an NGO and the civil society is trying to monitor and influence industrial pollution in the country."

We wish them well in their future efforts.

* Jay Ritchlin, Reach for Unbleached!

The nine-day Environmental Appeal Board (EAB) hearing on air pollution from the recovery boiler at Pacifica Papers Powell River pulp mill wrapped up in August. Last winter, Ministry of Environment Regional Waste Manager Ray Robb approved an amendment to Pacifica Papers' air pollution permit, allowing the company four more years of discharging pollution from the mill's recovery boiler at 'Level B' standards. Most mills in BC already meet 'Level A' standards. Six residents appealed the extension.

During the August hearings, Gary Thorsell, of Local 1, and Mike Verdiel, of Local 76, of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers of Canada (CEP) both spoke in favour of the pollution permit extension. The workers testified that Pacifica Papers used "job blackmail" to keep their support for the pollution extension.

In his testimony Gary Thorsell agreed that the fast-tracked schedule for air emission control upgrades, including a new electrostatic precipitator announced just days following the July EAB panel session [See MillWatch August 1999] , would not have happened without the environmental appeal.

Expert witnesses testifying earlier for both the appellants and the provincial government established the many environmental and health problems associated with pulp mill pollution.

* Contact appellant counsel William Andrews, ph: (604)924-0921 for more information

The heavily polluted Rayonier mill on the Strait of Juan de Fuca at Port Angeles, Washington, is not likely to be cleaned up because of a deal signed in June between the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and Rayonier Inc. which passes oversight of the clean up to the State, instead of the federal EPA-supervised Superfund Site process. William Alexander, a retired judge magistrate who reviewed the agreement for the EPA Office of the Ombudsman, says the agreement does not guarantee physical removal of hazardous wastes and although the tribe will be paid in the short term, the long term consequences may not be in the tribe's best interests. EPA tests show the mill and adjoining Strait sediments to be one of the most contaminated waste sites in the US.

* Contact Darlene Schanfald, Olympic Environmental Council; ph/fax: (360)417-0855

Bowater and Nexfor have started programs to phase out Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals NPE and APE (nonyl and alkyl phenol ethoxylates) at their mills. In 1997 the companies identified products containing these compounds (dozens of cleaners, surfactants, anti-foulants, and paints) and began a program of alternatives testing and substitution. Environment Canada says the pulp and paper industry uses one third of all NPE in Canada. John Roberts, Nexfor Environmental Director, noted that some environmental issues can be "addressed proactively and resolved at low cost and without major process changes."

* Pulp & Paper Canada 100:3, 1999

In the early 1990's Domtar Cornwall's kraft and fine paper mill found its landfill was rapidly filling up with primary sludge, bark and lime dregs. Not only that but, in 1996, secondary treatment system sludge was added to the disposal problem. A new landfill was opposed by local residents so the mill decided to sell its waste to farmers.

A series of experiments spread sludge on hybrid poplar plantations, with good results, according to the company, and by 1994, the Ontario Ministry of Environment issued permits for use of the primary clarifier sludge as "organic soil amendment." Lime dregs were delisted for use by farmers. Domtar combined secondary and primary sludge, promoted as Domtar Soil Conditioner, is now given to 30 farmers and is promoted as an agronomic benefit. The mill, which wins environmental awards, plans to expand its efforts to keep all mill waste out of the landfill.

However, sludge-buster Maureen Reilly put a stop, at least temporarily to the mill's sale of sludge to a strawberry farm, when she discovered that there were high levels of fecal streptococcus and fecal coli in the sludge. Local gardeners are upset because the Ministry also stopped the mill's donation of bags of sludge to the local horticultural society.

The mill says there is no fecal material in their waste stream and therefore "In a pulp and paper mill water system in the absence of fecal input, the numbers of fecal coliforms and even E coli are meaningless as far as any health hazard is concerned."

It appears that the Ontario Ministry Guidelines for Utilization of Biosolids and Other Wastes on Agricultural Land issued in 1996 only require sludge, even kraft sludge, to be tested for a handful of heavy metals and dioxin before wide-spread distribution to the environment. Clearly, toxicology is not a bottom line for Ontario's pro-business government.

* Agrinews, July 1999, Pulp & Paper Canada 100(3), 1999; Maureen Reilly; Delores Broten