Paper

About 2 weeks ago, International Paper Company, announced the closing of the paper mill in Franklin, Va. The town of Franklin only has a population of ~8,500 people as of the 2000 census. Closing the paper mill will eliminate over 1,100 jobs located at the mill itself, and a ripple effect that will more than double that number, when local businesses that rely on or support the mill are included. In less than 4 months, the mill will cease to operate.

This particular mill manufactured copying paper. IPC stated that the demand for such paper has declined in recent years, and they expect that trend to continue. This is not at all surprising, when you consider how communication is changing with advances in technology. The printed page is not only becoming unnecessary in the corporate environment, and elsewhere, it is expensive.

Every newspaper in the country is currently in a financial crisis. This is the result of reduced income, primarily from advertising, because retailers are realizing better results by investing their ad money in TV and the internet. Also, typical consumers have found “Craigs List”,” Ebay”, etc. to be more cost effective and convenient than classified ads, and finally reduced readership, because people are finding the information they’re interested in on-line as opposed to purchasing a newspaper. Recently our local newspaper reduced the width of the printed page by 1/2 inch. If they hadn’t announced doing this, I doubt anyone would have noticed. The size of the print didn’t change, nor (so they say) did the content of the daily issues. The reason for doing this was because the cost of newsprint paper is the second highest expense they incur, behind employee salaries, and to avoid eliminating jobs, they chose that option.

I recently noticed that the company manufacturing the toilet paper we have been purchasing for use in this house for as long as I can recall, has reduced the size of each roll. Not the number of sheets or the number of plies, but the width of each roll. They haven’t reduced the price, but each roll contains ~6% less paper.

I can remember when retailers such as Sears, Penneys, and now defunct Montgomery Wards, etc, printed catalogs three or four times a year. These were either mailed to consumers, or freely available to anyone who visited their stores. However, they’ve realized that today people prefer to comparison shop on the internet as opposed to leafing through hundreds of pages of various catalogs, and as a result, customers may now purchase a catalog if they wish.

I’m certain there are other similar examples that I can’t think of at the moment, but if I were able to gather the relevant statistics, I imagine there are millions of trees still growing today that would otherwise be in a landfill or recycling facility, if it weren’t for the “information age”. Although I’m fairly certain that saving the environment was not a driving factor in any of these technological developments, never the less it’s a good thing, at least in the big picture.

However, I’ll leave it to someone else, to try to convince a recently unemployed mill worker, with a family to care for, how beneficial this is to all of us.