Is the end near for the paper industry?

[Xema]

@jonesj2205

I asked a coworker for an email she received once. She printed it out and faxed it to me.

Here’s a case where this (minus the faxing) was done for 55,000 pages of emails.

[silenus]

@Waxwinged

Nowhere near. There will always be a need for toilet paper.

Tell that to the Japanese.

[suranyi]

@silenus

Tell that to the Japanese.

They still use toilet paper in Japan, as I can attest from my visits to Tokyo. Those high tech toilets haven’t caught on everywhere.

[PoppaSan]

@femmejean

Considering the fact that most people have an irrational dislike of electronic books, no. I’ve heard that even college kids don’t like them. Why is that?

Personally I find it much tougher to learn a subject electronically. Picking up nuggets of information from sites like this one is not a problem. If I ever needed to relearn my physics or statistics online I’d be wasting my time. Give me a paper book though and I’d be back up to speed in a few days.

[Do_Not_Taunt]

@sitchensis

Making paper from traditional forestry/logging methods is on the decline. Modern lumber mills have very little wood waste and because of that a much higher percentage of that waste is bark and unsuitable for efficient paper production. The industry is moving towards plantation style forestry which is centered around the southern US.

Why is there less wood waste now than before?

[dtilque]

@Do_Not_Taunt

Why is there less wood waste now than before?

Computerized sawing equipment, I expect. It can measure the logs via lasers and cut things quite exactly to minimize waste.

[Terry_Kennedy]

@Do_Not_Taunt

Why is there less wood waste now than before?

Improvements in cutting. The first shaped wood beams were created via the “use an axe and remove anything that doesn’t look like a beam”. Then came single-saw mills that lopped off the 4 sides of a piece of wood via repeated passes. Then there were multi-saw units that did all of the cuts in one direction, followed by either another pass or feeding to a second saw that cut the opposite direction. Anything left over from those operations got used for secondary purposes like paper. Now we have computer-controlled laser-optimized saws that get every last achievable board out of a piece of raw lumber. Here is a site with a brief video. The uses of wood have also changed - while my house has 10" x 12" main support beams that are 40’ long or so, these days metal I-beams or laminated beams are used for that application. The up-to-14’ long floorboards in my house would be random short pieces fingerjointed together in a new house (if it wasn’t all laminate / carpet / tile). Some of the remaining pieces of wood go into chipboard, sometimes some are burned to heat the drying kilns, etc. - all of which leaves less for secondary purposes like paper.

[Ike_Witt]

Not all wood is suitable for efficient paper manufacturing. But there are many things that can be used as a substitute. For instance the waste left over after sugarcane production, after the cane has been ‘juiced’, is used for paper manufacture in South America.

ETA: A good and recent book on the history of paper. Remember that paper making was a big technological step forward at the time…

[Amateur_Barbarian]

A general footnote, but I’ve been able to get a laugh by intoning the following phrase any time I’m in a room full of people with printed reports or invoices or whatever…

“Theeee… Paperless Office of the Future.”

[Do_Not_Taunt]

@dtilque

Computerized sawing equipment, I expect. It can measure the logs via lasers and cut things quite exactly to minimize waste.

@Terry_Kennedy

Improvements in cutting. The first shaped wood beams were created via the “use an axe and remove anything that doesn’t look like a beam”. Then came single-saw mills that lopped off the 4 sides of a piece of wood via repeated passes. Then there were multi-saw units that did all of the cuts in one direction, followed by either another pass or feeding to a second saw that cut the opposite direction. Anything left over from those operations got used for secondary purposes like paper. Now we have computer-controlled laser-optimized saws that get every last achievable board out of a piece of raw lumber. Here is a site with a brief video. The uses of wood have also changed - while my house has 10" x 12" main support beams that are 40’ long or so, these days metal I-beams or laminated beams are used for that application. The up-to-14’ long floorboards in my house would be random short pieces fingerjointed together in a new house (if it wasn’t all laminate / carpet / tile). Some of the remaining pieces of wood go into chipboard, sometimes some are burned to heat the drying kilns, etc. - all of which leaves less for secondary purposes like paper.

Interesting, thanks guys. So if I’m understanding this correctly, the supply of wood scraps (traditionally used in papermaking) is declining, but the demand is not due to increases in packaging and the growth of the middle class in Asia. So, we’re chopping up more full trees for paper (the plantation farming mentioned by sitchensis)?

[astro]

Paper that is used for newspapers, magazines and books will continue to decline paper for boxes, household goods etc. etc no.

This link is interesting

Frequent Questions | Paper Recycling | US EPA

And looking at the paper wiki -banana paper? It’s gorgeous!

Banana Paper