Op-Ed

Wood Industry Recycles!

We were pleased

Environmental Building News (EBN) gave a positive review to the American Forest & Paper Association’s (AF&PA)

National Wood Recycling Directory but somewhat disappointed with your opinion of our industry’s recycling efforts.

It’s misleading to describe AF&PA as “an organization that is primarily concerned with virgin raw materials.” For decades, AF&PA has been leading the nationwide effort toward forest products recovery and recycling. AF&PA set and achieved its voluntary 40% paper recovery goal in 1993—two years before its deadline, and is well on the way to achieving a 50% recovery goal in the year 2000. Today, the U.S. paper industry recovers 44% of all paper in the country. AF&PA recently identified fiber recovery as one of five priorities identified for 1996. Obviously, AF&PA is strongly committed to forest products, fiber recovery and recycling, as we have been for many years.

The first edition of the

National Wood Recycling Directory is a collection of state and local government wood recycling receiving center information, and the product of six months’ regional research. As we acknowledge in the book, there is no way our

Directory could list every place in the country that receives and recycles wood. But we are confident that in publishing this document, together with reply pages for readers to enter companies we may have missed, future editions will be more complete.

Since your admittedly “quick review” led you to conclude that this

Directory is “far from comprehensive,” I encourage you to use that reply page and send us information for the businesses you believe we have missed.

W. Henson Moore

President & CEO

AF&PA

Published May 1, 1996

(1996, May 1). Wood Industry Recycles!. Retrieved from https://www.buildinggreen.com/op-ed/wood-industry-recycles

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