> Plantation trees are used to make paper in New Zealand and Australia.
Same for Brazil and Uruguay - they go for certain kinds of eucalyptus trees. How do I know, not having visited either country?
My wife is a chemical process engineer, and Finland has a large pulp and paper industry. The technology universities feed process and design engineers there. (To a point where some universities' chemistry departments have been neatly coupled with local pulping industry.)
Eucalyptus family has some surprisingly fast-growing varieties. Also, according to the industry, their fibre competes in quality and properties with Scandinavian birchwood. This kind of fibre is particularly wanted for high-quality printing paper.
It takes 40-50 years for a birch to grow from seedling to a pulpable "product". With plantation eucalyptus, this time frame is compressed to 15-20 years. You can crunch the numbers.
The irony in this is that in in order to make space for eucalyptus plantations, the industry had to cut something down first. And due to the time frames involved, they need to constantly make space for new plantations so they can provide a reliable future supply.
The thing they cut down? Rain forest. (Among other things. But certainly enough of it to warrant concern.)
Final note: you can't grow eucalyptus in Scandinavia. According to Brazilian process engineers, eucalyptus can withstand one or two sub-zero temperature nights a year. Call it two max. Not two hundred.
Good observation. Another note about eucalyptus is that aside from paper or firewood, it doesn't have much use. It can't really be dried without extensive warping or splitting and doesn't have any use as lumber.
Same for Brazil and Uruguay - they go for certain kinds of eucalyptus trees. How do I know, not having visited either country?
My wife is a chemical process engineer, and Finland has a large pulp and paper industry. The technology universities feed process and design engineers there. (To a point where some universities' chemistry departments have been neatly coupled with local pulping industry.)
Eucalyptus family has some surprisingly fast-growing varieties. Also, according to the industry, their fibre competes in quality and properties with Scandinavian birchwood. This kind of fibre is particularly wanted for high-quality printing paper.
It takes 40-50 years for a birch to grow from seedling to a pulpable "product". With plantation eucalyptus, this time frame is compressed to 15-20 years. You can crunch the numbers.
The irony in this is that in in order to make space for eucalyptus plantations, the industry had to cut something down first. And due to the time frames involved, they need to constantly make space for new plantations so they can provide a reliable future supply.
The thing they cut down? Rain forest. (Among other things. But certainly enough of it to warrant concern.)
Final note: you can't grow eucalyptus in Scandinavia. According to Brazilian process engineers, eucalyptus can withstand one or two sub-zero temperature nights a year. Call it two max. Not two hundred.