Recycling newspapers vs. burying them: Which is better for global warming?

Austin's zero-waste program got me thinking about this one.  I'm not sure the answer is as obvious as people think it is.

Recycling newspapers clearly uses less energy than making newsprint from virgin pulp.  A lot less energy -- perhaps 40% less.  If all we had to worry about was the energy involved, the equation would be simple to solve.

But we also have to account for the carbon absorbed by trees.

Most people think saving trees is the main advantage of recycling newspapers.  But people are worried about the wrong trees.  The trees that matter aren't the ones that are cut down, they're the ones that aren't planted. 

A lot of the trees that are cut down for pulp are specifically grown to be cut down.  Tree farm owners expect a return on their investment in the land; they aren't in the business of providing free carbon absorption.  If they don't get a good enough return on the timber, some of them will switch to a different use.

Take Landowner Larry.  Larry's just clear-cut 500 acres for pulpwood, and he's trying to decide what to do with his land.  Larry ordinarily would replant his 500 acres with saplings then sit back and wait 40 years for another big payday (or sell to someone willing to wait for the payday).  But Larry's noticed the BIG PUSH to recycle newsprint; the experts predict demand will be cut by, say, 40% in 40 years.  Larry's worried about that.  Forty years is a long time to wait for a big payday when the payday might not be so big.

Larry's land just happens to be good for farming, too.  Corn especially.  Larry can read the newspaper, and knows the government is pushing a loony policy to encourage American farmers to plow under as much land as possible for biofuels.  Billions of gallons of ethanol per year, or something like that.  Larry decides he's better off renting his land to farmers.  They can make a bunch of money growing ethanol, which means he can get a better return than he expects from growing timber.  (We can also imagine Larry instead selling to a developer, who will grow houses and roads and strip malls.)

Our carbon emissions have taken a double whammy.  We've lost 500 acres of carbon-sucking saplings and we've replaced them with 500 acres of carbon-spewing farmland (or suburbs).  Sure, our push to recycle newspaper has saved some trees in the short term, but with the likely consequence that timberland will be converted to farmland or housing.  (I know that some timberland can't be put to alternative uses -- for example, land deep in the middle of a national forest -- but we're hypothesizing a timberland owner who is on the bubble.)

I'm not sure how to calculate recycling's net carbon benefit once lost timberland is taken into account.  For starters, it's hard to tell how much timberland will really be taken out of production; a 10% decrease in the price of timber (caused by slackening demand) does not necessarily mean a 10% decrease in the amount of timberland under cultivation.  In other words, I don't know the price elasticity of the supply of timberland.  I do know, though, that the price elasticity will rise as the value of farmland rises.  Simply put, our government is doing all it can to incentivize timberland owners to convert their land to farmland.  Some landowners will respond to the incentives, and will do so even more quickly if they expect the long-term demand for their trees to slacken.

Since I don't know how much timberland we will lose by depressing the demand for trees, I don't know whether we will emit more or less carbon by recycling most of our newsprint.  It is possible that recycling saves so much energy we can ignore trees.  But that's not obviously true -- one acre of trees can absorb as much as four tons of carbon per year, which is a lot of carbon.  And that's before we've taken into account the extra carbon generated by the alternative use of the land.

Note also that as energy becomes greener, recycled newsprint's carbon advantage over virgin newsprint will shrink.  Considering the (likely) declining benefit and the growing appeal of alternative uses for timberland such as farmland, our optimal long-term carbon strategy may be to induce an increase in the demand for timber. 

This isn't to knock Austin's zero-waste program.  Newspapers take up a lot more landfill space than plastic bags.  As long as the city's cost of recycling newsprint is less than the cost of buying landfill space for newsprint, then the city ought to move toward a zero-waste program.  The carbon calculation looks intractable, though.  Too intractable for the city to be confident that recycling newprint will do anything for global warming in the long run. 

Comments

[Tim]

It is difficult. You left out how hard it is to find new landfill space, and how costly it is to reuse landfill space later. I think we need to attack the problems separately. Obviously the way we dispose of things must be addressed. Also global warming must be addressed. I'd say rather than attack recycling (we definitely don't want people to stop doing it), we should just push for subsidies for trees. Or more green space buying ala the City of Austin. Perhaps the future market will have a place for these oxygen/carbon farms.

[Spencer]

I'm intrigued. This is definitely a side of the argument that isn't being raised very often. Thanks for the thought-provoking post.

[AC]

Tim, I think the difficulty of finding new landfill space will or ought to be reflected in the price, so I'm not so worried about that.

I've been thinking about the possibility of subsidizing trees, too. As (if) demand for timber decreases, some sort of subsidy will be necessary to maintain the same timber acreage. Of course, our national forests can be thought of as tree subsidies (which is an argument for deflecting logging to privately owned land).

I've always read that young trees grow faster than old trees. E.g., a loblolly pine absorbs a lot more carbon in its first 40 years than in its second 40 years. (Some of these "facts" turn out to have a pretty thin basis, I admit.) Could the optimal carbon strategy/subsidy be to pay landowners for timber and then bury it without processing it? That would maintain demand while maintaining a healthy stock of young trees.

[M1EK]

"Tim, I think the difficulty of finding new landfill space will or ought to be reflected in the price, so I'm not so worried about that."

But it isn't - we know it isn't now, and probably won't be in the future - we're not going to charge people a lot of money for trash disposal because the incentives to illegally dump would become too high to manage.

Also, the assumption is made (granted, you have to make some) that the choice is tree farm or ethanol/suburb; when actually some other farms ended up being abandoned into healthy forest all over the northeast. So there's at least three options (for land not highly in demand, and not flat enough for corn, we might end up with a superior environmental outcome by simple abandonment).

[Matt Turner]

I really like your thoughts here. I do the same with many many things. So far Aluminum is still hard to make any sort of arguement against recycling.

Also I totally agree that the zero waste thing makes sense as long as it doesn't do more harm than good. Really though the whole program is designed to make people feel better. Much like many things in this world.

Most people aren't really green thinkers, they just do the green movement, because A) it's popular and B) it's convient at this point. Once you start asking people to walk or expend effort over a period of time, longer than a few days, you'll see their green streak fall to the wayside. That's not all people, as I generally think of M1EK as a truly green person who doesn't mind alittle effort, but unfortunately most don't have his conviction.

[M1EK]

You have me read totally wrong, Matt. I'm all about building transit options that don't require people to wear a hairshirt -- which means we have to invest in good rail, rather than investing (or pretending to want to invest) in buses which suck.

Oh, and removing the excessive subsidies which make driving in particular and suburbs in general artificially cheap.

[AC]

M1EK, on the cost of landfill space -- the _City_ will pay the full price for landfill space. It can accurately weigh the costs and benefits, ie., whether zero waste is worth it. It may be too expensive to obtain perfect compliance from the public, but then the "recycling vs. burying" issue will be moot with respect to this waste.

I recycle newprint, btw, because it's bulky and takes up too much space in my trash can. It's just as easy to put it in a bin at the curb. So the behavior the city wants is easy to incentivize. (And, yes, I feel a twinge of guilt at throwing away newspaper.)

On your second point, some timberland may simply be abandoned. That factors into the elasticity of supply of timberland, which is hard to calculate.

Matt, aluminum is a new one to me. I've always heard that the energy saved is something like 90% or 95%, which would make it a pretty good candidate for recycling. (Even better when you factor in that you have to mine the bauxite ore.)

[DSK]

Boy, I could go on a while on this post.

I'll stick to a couple of specific things: M1EK, one reason so many tree farms in the northeast are idle is a combination of 1) easier pickings elsewhere, thanks to pimping out so much of our national forests unneccessarily (because private land for tree farms is much easier to come by than 100 years ago) 2) it's harder to get quality trees in the Northeast than it once was, thanks to acid rain.

AC, you are right about paper in general being something that is wholly derived from crop trees (especially southern yellow pines). Buying new paper is little worse than buying corn on the cob. And it's probably a slight win for paper on the pollution front - supposedly paper mills are smelly but not actually very polluting, and meanwhile modern corn farming relies on far too many damaging fertilizers and high levels.

IIRC, hardwood furniture and certain types of construction are the real consumers of non-plantation forests.

[M1EK]

DSK, I was referring to abandoned farmland in the NE, not abandoned timberland. IE, the stats about more trees now than in the 18th century; all the 'woods' where you come across old stone walls, etc.

AC, I don't even think the city 'pays' full cost for landfill even if you want to consider them as the customer - there are obvious and substantial externalities which are unsatisfactorallilayliy(*) handled today and may never be handled acceptably.

(* - unsatisfactorilly and other such spellings flagged as incorrect; so as is my wont, I go PURPOSEFULLY WRONG so nobody can tell I didn't know the right spelling).

[DSK]

"I've always read that young trees grow faster than old trees. E.g., a loblolly pine absorbs a lot more carbon in its first 40 years than in its second 40 years. (Some of these "facts" turn out to have a pretty thin basis, I admit.)"

It's species dependent, of course, but this is correct in the case of a loblolly or most yellow pines. These guys reach a point where additional vertical growth is much harder because of the inability of their trunk vascular systems to deliver efficiently nutrients. At that point they'll still grow vertically and in girth, but not as fast. Plus they put more and more energy into cones. Finally their vascular systems begin to degrade some, and they go "cone crazy."
The timeline is climate, location, and soil dependent. As you might expect, a loblolly in Bastrop will slow down even faster than one in the piney woods or on a South Carolina planation.

[Ben Brumfield]

M1EK writes: "[T]he assumption is [...] that the choice is tree farm or ethanol/suburb; when actually some other farms ended up being abandoned into healthy forest all over the northeast."

Unless abandoned farms in the NE are seriously different with abandoned farms in the SE, you're wrong here, M1EK. Specifically you're wrong that abandoned fields which grow up in pines are "healthy forest" instead of "tree farms".

What actually happens is that a field grows up into pines or a pine/oak mix and sits. After the trees grow for a couple of decades, a freelance timber buyer will track down the owner of the land and make an offer. Quite often the offer is much, much lower than the market rate -- I've heard of $5K being offered for timber worth $160K -- which makes the effort involved in tracking the owner down pay off. (If the owner truly cannot be located, the property is a prime target for timber theft.)

The buyer will assure the owner that they won't do that awful clear-cutting -- they'll only harvest marketable trees and will leave the rest of the woods standing, with no noticable aesthetic impact. When this is agreed to, the buyer "high-grades" the land, cuts a check to the landowner, and the process repeats itself 20 years later.

A stand of woods that has been high-graded repeatedly is NOT a healthy forest. In effect, reverse selective breeding occurs -- the slow growing, short, and crooked trees left behind provide seedlings for new trees, until the entire forest ecosystem is radically different from what would have occurred "naturally". From a forest ecosystem perspective, this is actually worse than clear-cutting. From a carbon absorption perspective, I imagine it's worse to have a stand of elderly overgrown shrubs than either a young stand of planted pines or an un-thinned 80-year old stand of stately trees. It's probably still better than a field of ethanol-bound corn, though.

To the untrained eye, these abandoned farms look like un-timbered forests, since they're never obviously clear-cut. But in fact, they're really tree-farms -- just poorly-managed ones.

[Matt Turner]

AC, I think my post was alittle confusing about Aluminum. What I meant was it's one fo the only materials I can't make an arguement for why someone might not want to recycle it. Really jobs would be about it, and well to me that wouldn't really be a good reason.

Although it is kinda scary to think that 3% of the world's energy production goes to Aluminum production. Of course all the more reason to recycle it.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5458

[Kedron Jerome Touvell]

One thing being presented at the city Zero-Waste meetings is the fact that methane from landfills is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. I asked the fellow giving the presentation which types of trash contribute the most to methane production (I figured it'd just be the food waste) and he said any organic material, which paper certainly qualifies as. Since methane is an order of magnitude worse than C02 as a greenhouse gas, this is an important consideration. The city and other agencies do some capture of landfill methane, but as far as I know it's a small percentage.

[Brian]

Recycle or Bury? Recycle, maybe. Bury, NO! There is another option that is rarely evaluated and that is to BURN it for energy. The quick reaction is that it adds to the carbon problem BUT it does not. It is carbon nuetral at the very least. First, when paper is burned for energy, it is replacing oil or coal or some other fossil fuel which makes it carbon nuetral. It frequently also reduces energy costs (and carbon) associated with transportation of the fossil fuel. Second, on an even grander scale, the whole process of burning wastepaper for energy and growing trees is carbon nuetral! This is a great extension of the whole concept of non-food biofuels. Don't put waste paper in landfills. If it can't be economically recycled, let it replace imported oil. Too many people have written off burning waste paper without thinking it through all the way. --Brian (The Timberland Blog)

[Paul Mullen (former Economic Advisor to UK Secretary for the Environment)]

An interesting and thought-provoking point.

I think the calculation may be simpler than you suggest. We don't need to worry about the price elasticity as we aren't concerned with quantifying the price drop for pulp lumber (unless we wish to research distributional issues of poverty among tree-growers). Clearly they have alternatives (particularly in view of corn shortages). I think we can trust the market to ensure that by the time in 40 years or so that those newly planted tress are ready to cut, the supply of pulp lumber will, one way or another, have fallen by about the amount of pulp made from recycled paper.

Of course that does not tell us whether fewer trees will be planted, or trees that have been planted will be cut early, or perhaps trees will be allowed to grow further to produce other lumber products.

A bigger danger I think is the rise in corn prices due to the artifical demand for ethanol fuels. Undoubtedly, once fallow land is hurriedly put back into production, agriculture will replace woodlands. We have been paying farmers to keep land idle, we have been subsidizing ethanol production and hence subsidizing corn growers, now perhaps the government will have to start subsidizing timber producers?