In our view / Industrial hemp

A BETTER WAY TO MAKE PAPER

It's particularly frustrating that the sale of the Kimberly-Clark
paper plant apparently fell through over environmental clean-up
concerns, after the company spent $300 million since 1995 upgrading
its wastewater and pulp-making systems. Now, the company plans to
raze the waterfront site and sell it for development.

The Kimberly-Clark website has pages and pages devoted to explaining
the company's commitment to sustainable business practices worldwide.
The company states, "The wood pulp we use is mainly sourced from
forests in the U.S., Canada and Brazil. We buy more than 90 percent
of our virgin fiber from external suppliers, and make the rest from
purchased wood chips in our two pulp mills in Everett, Washington,
U.S., and Tantanoola, Australia."

(Well, make that just the Tantanoola pulp mill, now.)

The company met and surpassed a goal to use 40 percent of either
recycled fiber or FSC-certified wood fiber in all North American
tissue products by the end of 2011, by using 42.6 percent by the end of 2009.

While these steps are laudable, they realistically can't sustain an
industry that relies on trees to create products that will always be in demand.

Why do we cling to the notion that paper products must come from
trees? At least two sustainable alternatives exist: Hemp and bamboo.

Industrial hemp, the blue-collar cousin to marijuana that has no
psychoactive properties, has been grown for at least 12,000 years for
fiber (textiles and paper) and food. (Thomas Jefferson drafted the
Declaration of Independence on hemp paper, according to the North
American Industrial Hemp Council.) It was grown commercially in the
U.S. until the 1950s.

States are increasingly authorizing the cultivation of hemp, USA
Today reported. From 1999 through last year, 17 states have enacted
measures that would either permit controlled cultivation or authorize
research. Hemp, as fiber or oilseed, is used to make thousands of
products, including clothing and auto parts. Proponents say American
farmers and industry are being shut out of a lucrative market as more
than 30 countries, including Canada, grow hemp as an agricultural commodity.

(One of those countries is France, where Kimberly-Clark has a mill
that produces hemp paper preferred for bibles because it lasts a very
long time and doesn't yellow, according to the hemp council.)

Importantly, hemp can be pulped using fewer chemicals than with wood.
It doesn't require chlorine bleach, which means no extremely toxic
dioxin being dumped into streams.

If government and industry had their act together, Everett would be
home to a thriving, hemp-based paper products mill, using plants
grown by Washington farmers.