News

Lawyer/Industry Coalition Defeats Recycled Paper Mandate

According to the November Recycled Paper News, a proposal to amend the Michgan Court Rules to mandate use of recycled paper for all papers filed with Michigan courts was soundly defeated by Michigan's State Bar Representative Assembly on September 22.

The amendment, sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation, the Attorney General's Office and the Environmental Law Section of the State Bar, would have required papers filed with Michigan courts to contain at least 20% postconsumer fiber, and pleadings would have had to be on totally chlorine free (TCF) paper. Within five years, papers filed would have had to be printed on both sides of the paper. The Michigan Chemical Council, Michigan Chamber of Commerce and Michigan Manufacturers Association were among those opposing the amendment. It was defeated, according to a source at the Bar Association, because small practitioners would

Stora Papyrus Newton Falls has its Name Shortened

The Stora Group recently decided that names of the business areas within Stora will no longer be a part of the company's official logo. Instead, only the Stora logo itself will be used, to strengthen the corporate group identity. So the name of Stora's mill and operations at Newton Falls, NY was changed Jan. 1 from Stora Papyrus Newton Falls, Inc. to Stora Newton Falls, Inc.

The mill makes about 400 tons per day of alkaline fine paper.

Noranda Forest Recycled Papers Gets Shorter Name Too

Noranda Forest Recycled Papers, a Canadian company headquartered in Thorold, Ontario, became Thorold Specialty Papers on January 1. It will continue to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Noranda Forest Inc.

Thorold Specialty Papers will be structured to develop and manufacture products which are customer driven, which means that it will be making value-added specialty papers. In the past it made about 800 tons per day of alkaline fine papers, which were sold under

Fungi Eat up Lignin in Bleach Plant Effluents

White-rot fungi are useful not only for pretreating wood chips before pulping (APA, October issue), but for reduction of adsorbable organic halides (AOX), chemical oxygen demand, and color in effluent. This goes a long way toward preparing the water for reuse, and helps make possible closed systems in pulp mills. For more information see F. Wolfaardt's paper, "Treatment of Bleach Plant Effluents by Lignin-Degrading Fungi--A Review," in Paper Southern Africa, June 1994, 9-10.

Greenpeace Loses Members & Contributions, 1990-94

According to figures gathered by John J. Fried for a Knight-Ridder News Service story released around December 17, Greenpeace has lost 32% of its membership since 1990, giving a slight edge to the National Wildlife Federation. These two groups lead the pack. None of the other six organizations covered in the story is even half as large. They are: the Nature Conservancy, National Audubon Society, Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council.

Greenpeace's loss of members cannot be blamed on the recession, because no other organization among those listed had more than a 12% drop, and three of them gained members or held steady. The Nature Conservancy membership gained about 25%.

Greenpeace's annual contributions fell by 40%, and it now appears to be in third place (1994 data for the Sierra Club was not included, so it is hard to tell). The Nature Conservancy held steady in first place. Most of the other organizations saw increases ranging up to 50%.

Was Early Newsprint Sized?

Because of the controversy over the reason for deterioration of old newspapers (see "Aging Behavior of Groundwood and Freesheet, Pt. 2," this issue), the APA Editor wrote to Peter F. Tschudin, President of the International Association of Paper Historians, to ask whether it could be because they were sized with alum and rosin. He replied, "There are a lot of papermaking manuals of different times and languages which mention the fact that newsprint has been sized either not at all or only slightly, so that not the alum, but the general acid conditions in producing this paper and the chemical reactions of the lignin with the cellulose fiber have to be blamed for the damage. Of course these reactions may be triggered e.g. by air pollution or bad storage conditions."