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- Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!bruce.cs.monash.edu.au!monu6!vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au!bull
- From: bull@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
- Newsgroups: talk.environment
- Subject: Lets pulp hemp for paper, not trees
- Message-ID: <1993Jan8.180244.90925@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
- Date: 8 Jan 93 18:02:44 +1100
- Summary: why are we so stupid?
- Organization: Computer Centre, Monash University, Australia
- Lines: 25
-
-
- I was listening to the radio the other day, and the hourly
- news report mentioned how protesters were preparing themselves to
- go to Tasmania (an island state of Australia) to prevent logging
- (for woodchipping and ultimately paper making overseas) from taking place.
- My first reaction was, this is stupid, why don't they make the paper out
- of hemp? I haven't been living in a cave (and not heard about the needless
- woodchipping), but this was the first time I conciously made the association
- of replacing wood pulp with hemp fibre.
-
- To me this makes a lot of sense. The virgin forest trees being cut
- down take centuries to grow, and non native forests such as pinus radiata
- take 20 years before they are mature for logging (and poison the soil with
- their acidity in the process). You can grow and harvest a new hemp crop
- every year. To be honest, I don't know how much land you need to grow
- enough hemp to equal the woodpulp produced from 1 acre of trees (either
- virgin forest or commercial plantation), but hey, farmers all over the
- world are being subsidised because of agricultural over-production. There's
- a market for the fibre, we just seem to be harvesting the wrong type
- of plant. Now if only there wasn't such a social hangup about hemp.
-
-
- Bull@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au OR bull@monu1.cc.monash.oz
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