Papercon, Nano Renewable Materials and a Tour of Paper Schools

I took the plunge and bought an iPad. I am on a plane right now writing this post returning from a visit to U. Maine Orono and the PSSP program there. The students are always interesting to interact with and I enjoyed visiting the professors there. The snow storm was a challenge and required us to be nimble on our feet to get home. We drove to Portland in the storm to get to this point.

I actually feel like I am on a paper school tour. A couple weeks ago I attended an Executive Seminar at IPST at Ga Tech. That institute has truly become integrated with Ga Tech under the new director's leadership. Good job Norm.

Next visit is to Western Michigan University to attend my first PTF board meeting and I am looking forward to interacting with the board members and students there.

I also plan to visit Auburn and my first professor in my chemical engineering education at SUNY Buffalo, Harry Cullinan. It good see that all of these schools are adjusting to our new reality of a smaller and different paper industry. I suspect I will see many of these professors at the TAPPI Nanotechnology Conference in June in Washington, DC. The application of the learning from the nano research being done around the world may be a major game changer. Just like this iPad. My personal experience with this device is telling me that traditional uses for fiber based materials is about to change and maybe for the better to create a more renewal and greener world.

I hope you are registered to attend Papercon in May. I am rather proud of the program my committee put together for the conference. It will feature a unit rack design keeping all of the coating geeks together for the entire conference. I am so looking forward to it.

See you then in Cincinnati!

Sustainability Features of Forest Products Based Material

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I read a great article by Phil Riebel in Pulp and Paper International Magazine this month. The title of the article is "10 Ways to 'Green' Your Paper". He found an interesting quote he attributes to the World Wildlife Fund, but I will paraphrase here. They consider it a valuable product made of mostly renewable resources that increases levels of literacy and democracy worldwide.

Phil points out that forest based materials:

• are the product of sunlight, soil, nutrients and water
• paper is recyclable - 40% of paper worldwide is made from recycled fiber
• a major energy source in making paper is biomass
• paper production only contributes 1% of global CO2
• sustainably managed forests mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon

If you are involved in the forest products industry be proud of yourself.

Related articles

• Can I recycle recycled paper? (greenanswers.com)
• How is Paper Recycled? (1800recycling.com)
• Mondi ranked first in new WWF paper company environmental index (whattheythink.com)

The link is to an interview my wife, Debra Lyons, did this morning on Georgia Work Ready. Click the link to find out what it is about.
georgia-offers-help-for-online-job-seekers

Quoted from the Good Day Atlanta Web Page:

"

Georgia Offers Help for Online Job Seekers

Updated: Friday, 17 Sep 2010, 10:08 AM EDT
Published : Friday, 17 Sep 2010, 10:08 AM EDT

Finding local jobs online can seem tough, but the state of Georgia wants to help. They've launched Georgia Work Ready, a website designed to help local companies find talented local people. Debra Lyons, the director of the Governor's Office of Workforce Development, joined Good Day Atlanta to explain.

Local Jobs: Georgia Work Ready
Looking for local jobs on Monster and Career Builder can be daunting and time-consuming. To make it easier for Georgians to locate local job opportunities, Georgia Work Ready launched a new, free online job site.
Job seekers who are Work Ready Certified can now look for jobs at Work Ready Connect: "
www.workreadyconnect.org

11th Advanced Coating Fundamentals Symposium Interview

Image via Wikipedia

This is the transcript to a podcast I did yesterday to promote the upcoming TAPPI Advanced
Coating Fundamentals Symposium. 

Have you registered yet? If not please do, I want to see you there!

Hello, I’m Craig McKinney from TAPPI and welcome to our podcast about the 11th Advanced Coating Fundamentals Symposium.  I am joined today by Dr. Tony Lyons, Director of Research for IMERYS Pigments for Paper North America.  Tony is the Session Chair for Session 9 - Advanced Understanding of Coating Layer Structures at the Advanced Coating Fundamentals Symposium, which will be held October 11^th through the 13^th in Munich, Germany.

Tony, welcome and thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today! 

 Tony: Hi Craig, I hope you and the listeners to this Podcast are having a great day. It is my pleasure to share with you my thoughts on the upcoming Advanced Coating Fundamentals Symposium. I understand you have a few questions for me. Fire away!

Question 1:

Tony, Why do you think your colleagues should attend this event?

Tony: There is no better technical event on the coating of paper than this one. I have never been disappointed in one of these events and look forward to this one as much as any before. Where else can you interact with all of the leading thinkers and doers in advancing the science and technology of the coating of paper? I can’t think of one, although Papercon comes close. This is the event where there are no holds barred on the sharing of high tech thinking on the subject.

Question 2:

What is significant about this year’s program, Tony?

Tony: Every one of these symposiums has taught me something new about coating paper. This promises to be no different. The materials science of paper will be highlighted by discussions about fold crack, the mechanisms of how binders interact with pigments and the base substrate, and how light will interact with a paper coating. There will be a whole session on the new and exciting high speed curtain coating process. Sustainable and biobased paper chemistries are also a major highlight for me.

Question 3:

Finally, Tony, can you tell our listeners why the 11^th Advanced Coating Fundamentals Symposium is the can’t miss event of the year for the paper coating industry?

Tony: You mean besides the fact that it is in a beautiful area of Germany, that it is in Munich and that PTS has a great facility for these types of events? Why sure!

Image via Wikipedia

If you are looking for a high technical content event where the focus is on paper coating science then this is the event for you. While the usual conference events are tremendous for gaining technical knowledge and networking with a broad cross-section of the paper industry; this event will bring you up close and personal with the very latest in thinking by world class experts from academia and industry on relevant, but highly technical problems. This does not happen every year. There is no waiting ‘til next year. I can’t wait to go and wouldn’t want to wait another two years because I missed this one!

Tony, thank you so much for your time today and for sharing your expertise with us.  We look forward to seeing you all at the 11th Advanced Coating Fundamentals Symposium, taking place October 11^th  through the 13^th  in Munich, Germany.  Visit www.TAPPI.org/10ACF if you would like more information about the symposium including registration and sponsorship opportunities.

Verso Paper Corp. Launches Facebook Page

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Check out the link. In order to facilitate the HIRING of new people to the company they have launched a Facebook page. Two big pieces of news here. A paper company has joined the social networking world and better yet they are hiring!

Let's Debunk Some "Facts"

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The following list is from thedailygreen.com. Under each point is my response.

• Forests store 50% of the world's terrestrial carbon. (In other words, they are awfully important "carbon sinks" that hold onto pollution that would otherwise lead to global warming.)  
• My response: This is an excellent point. Did you know that younger forests sequester more CO2 than older ones do? A well managed working forest, the kind that supplies the wood pulp for paper, is younger and has less CO2/methane producing rot than an older forest. If a forest is not a working one it is in more danger of being clear cut and turned into a paved over development.
  
• Half the world's forests have already been cleared or burned, and 80% of what's left has been seriously degraded.  
• My response: What is left out here is that most of that was for development and conversion to agricultural land. In the USA the number of acres of forest land has been quite stable and has actually grown over the last 10-15 years.
  
• 42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper.  
• My response: Keep in mind that that this fact only applies to industrial wood harvest. This is how important that keeping the paper industry alive is. The best managed forests are the plantations used to make paper. The trees are replanted as opposed to conversion to agricultural or developmental purposes. Trees are a renewal resource. Keep them well managed!

• The paper industry is the 4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions among United States manufacturing industries, and contributes 9% of the manufacturing sector's carbon emissions.  
• My response: I am going to directly quote the Down to Earth website by International Paper here:

"paper: One of the great things about paper is that its primary raw materials are renewable. The paper and forest products industry replenishes more than it takes and ensures the sustainability of our forests by planting 1.7 million trees every single day, more than three times what is harvested. And the U.S. Dept. of Energy has stated that the carbon sequestered on forested lands in 2006 was greater than the carbon released from harvesting wood over the same period.
electronic: Making a computer typically requires the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals, including gold, silver and palladium, as well as the extensive use of plastics and hydrocarbon solvents. The lifespan of a computer is short, and electronics have become the fastest growing waste stream in the world."

• Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste (and one third of municipal landfill waste).  
• My response: See above and hey at least paper is compostable.

• Municipal landfills account for one third of human-related methane emissions (and methane is 23-times more potent a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide).  
• My response: Wait a second there. Doesn't that methane come from food waste and human waste (baby diapers folks).
  

• If the United States cut office paper use by just 10% it would prevent the emission of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases -- the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road. 
• My response: And then you have produce the electricity to drive all of those electronic devices that would take their place. I don't think this analysis was done to completion.
  

• Compared to using virgin wood, paper made with 100% recycled content uses 44% less energy, produces 38% less greenhouse gas emissions, 41% less particulate emissions, 50% less wastewater, 49% less solid waste and -- of course -- 100% less wood. 
• response: My only comment here is that we need to use the recycled fiber appropriately. Tissue and toweling is much more appropriate than high end coated paper production.
  

• In 2003, only 48.3% of office paper was recovered for recycling.

• Recovered paper accounts for 37% of the U.S. pulp supply.

• Printing and writing papers use the least amount of recycled content -- just 6%. Tissues use the most, at 45%, and newsprint is not far behind, at 32%.  
• My response: That is appropriate. Cleaning up the recycle content is expensive and inappropriate for coated paper production. Use it in the production of newsprint, tissue and toweling.
  

• Demand for recycled paper will exceed supply by 1.5 million tons of recycled pulp per year within 10 years.

• While the paper industry invests in new recycled newsprint and paper packaging plants in the developing world, almost none of the new printing and writing paper mills use recycled content.  
• My response: there is a reason for this. It is expensive to process the fiber for coated papers. The production of coated paper is lower than those other market segments anyway. 
• China, India and the rest of Asia are the fastest growing per-capita users of paper, but they still rank far behind Eastern Europe and Latin America (about 100 pounds per person per year),
  Australia (about 300 pounds per person per year) and Western Europe
  (more than 400 pounds per person per year).
• The Forest Stewardship Council's certification of sustainable forestry practices is growing, with 50% of the paper product market share and 226 million acres
  accounted for. Advocates say the demand for recycled paper and
  sustainably harvested pulp from consumers, advertisers, magazine makers
  and other users of paper will yield the fastest reforms of the industry.  
• My response: Yes and this is happening at a rapid rate.
  

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/7447#ixzz0xdUmDF9Y

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Hey Look at That! A Forward Thinking Paper Company

Image by johnmuk via Flickr

I would like to applaud Verso Paper Corp. on launching a mobile version of their corporate site. It is heartwarming to see a paper company be forward thinking in how they interact with their customers and other stakeholders.

This new version provides a simple and fast interface to to their product specifications, sales contact information and investor information.

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• Verso Paper Corp. Launches Mobile Version of Corporate Website (eon.businesswire.com)