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  Today Online 28 Sep 07
'Green paper'? Paper jams rile S'poreans more ...
Tan Hui Leng

GLOBAL warming may be the concern of the day, but only four in 10 working adults in Singapore profess to be "very concerned" about the environment, going by a Synovate survey.

Released to coincide with Green Consumer Day today, the survey saw respondents rate air pollution over deforestation as the top environmental concern.

So it was no surprise that where paper was concerned, consumers were more concerned about practical issues such as paper not getting jammed in the printer, than about whether the paper was environmentally friendly.

Indeed, 8 per cent of corporate respondents claimed it was not important for the paper their company uses to be environmentally friendly, and only 1 in 25 said their companies bought "green" paper as a matter of policy.

Just 15 per cent were aware of the source of the paper they use — of these, 47 per cent broadly defined the source as "trees".

In fact, 71 per cent of the world's paper is produced from virgin paper sourced from natural forest that is logged and left to regenerate via seedlings or without human aid. They are also produced from original boreal forests in the northern hemisphere, tropical rainforests or original temperate hardwood forests.

Deforestation as a result of the logging of old growth and plantation forests has caused worldwide loss of biodiversity and soil erosion, among other things.

Paper made from farmed trees has the least environmental impact due to its preservation of the environment's natural biodiversity and reduced energy consumption.
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