Natural resources - fuels, minerals, water and food commodities - form the basis of all human activity. They are the essential inputs to both subsistence economies and the most advanced technological societies. Resource consumption in the world is rising rapidly, driven by population growth and rising wealth. Technological change and urbanisation also fuel consumption by creating new patterns of human needs and aspirations.

These trends drive fundamental changes in the global biological processes - agriculture, forest and fishery sectors. Increasing demand for industrial wood fibre, for example, will result in supplies being drawn from the world's last remaining frontier forests in the Amazon, equatorial Africa, and the boreal forests of Siberia and Canada.

For highly industrialised economies, the total volume of natural resources required can be staggering. Significantly, the resulting impacts from this consumption, including water pollution and landscape disturbance, are often felt far from the economies that benefit from them, since industrial economies import many raw materials from afar. This raises real concerns about environmental equity and the global economy, since the benefits and costs of industrial production are not equally shared. It is here that the benefits of recycling become quite clear. Every ton of raw material recycled, not only replaces a ton that would have been sourced and processed, but also avoids the creation of waste and decreases energy requirements.

Apart from being a source of raw material for paper products, forests also perform the following environmental functions:

• Absorption of carbon dioxide and oxygen, thus counteracting the "greenhouse effect"

• Stabilisation of climate and water levels

• Prevention of soil erosion

• Storage of solar energy

• Provision of food and habitat for birds and animals

Deforestation is defined as the permanent destruction of indigenous forests and woodlands. The term does not include the managed removal of industrial timber plantations of gum, pines and wattles. Deforestation has resulted in the worldwide reduction of indigenous forests to four-fifths of their pre-agricultural area. Indigenous forests now cover 21% of the earth's land surface. Annually 12 million hectares of indigenous forest are cleared globally. Almost all occurs in the moist forests and open woodlands of the tropics. If deforestation continues to occur at this rate, almost all natural moist forest could be lost by 2050, except for isolated areas in Amazonia, the Zaire basin and a few protected reserve and park areas.

Drivers of deforestation are:

• Conversion of agricultural land to feed the growing population

• Development of cash crops and cattle ranching

• Commercial logging

• Demand for firewood and building material

• Heavy browsing of saplings by domestic animals such as goats

Consequences of deforestation are varied and include:

• Alteration of local and global climates through the disruption of the carbon cycle (deforestation contributes one-third of all carbon dioxide releases caused by people and is a major contributor to the greenhouse effect);

• Changes in the water cycle (less water can be retained in a region, resulting in a drier climate);

• Soil erosion as a result of the loss of protective cover of vegetation;

• Silting of water courses, lakes and dams as a result of soil erosion;

• Extinction of species which depend on the forest for survival (forests contain more than one-half of all species on our planet);

• Desertification

Global wood consumption has risen by 64% since 1961. Demand for fuelwood and charcoal has risen by nearly 80% in the same period, with more than half the world's wood supply being burnt as fuel. Although rising demand for industrial wood has encouraged widespread planting of industrial plantations, today they only account for 25% of supply. The bulk of wood fibre for all uses still comes from old-growth or secondary-growth forests. Demand for wood fibre is a major, though by no means the only, cause of deforestation. Since 1960 more than one-fifth of the world's entire tropical forest cover has been removed. If current patterns are not changed, pressure of demand will result in supplies being drawn from the world's last remaining "frontier" forests.

Considerable scope exists for efficiency improvements, if encouraged by regulatory and economic incentives. These include:

• Improved efficiency of fibre utilization

• Substitution of non-wood materials where appropriate

• Increased proportion of wood fibre recovered during processing and manufacture

• Increased portion of paper made from recycled fibre

• Developing markets for sustainably produced hardwood products

In theory, the world's entire current demand for industrial wood could be met from intensively managed plantations covering an area equivalent to less than 10% of today's natural forests.

Every stage of the paper production and consumption cycle is associated with a range of problems. Most woodpulp comes from natural forests managed for timber production and from plantations around the world. As demand rises pressure on unmanaged forests is likely to increase. Pulp and papermaking can be a highly polluting process. Liquid effluents from mills include a range of organic, toxic, and chlorinated matter that adversely affects water quality. While large-scale paper producers in some industrialised countries have succeeded in achieving or approaching closed-cycle bleaching, in which no or very little effluent is discharged, serious problems are still common in small pulp and paper mills in developing countries.

Pollution could actually be worsened by a physical or economic scarcity of wood fibre in the future, especially if greater use of nonwood fibres for papermaking is encouraged - already a significant raw material in China and India. Nonwood fibres from crops like kenaf, bamboo, straw or bagasse are not a perfect substitute for wood. Agricultural products such as these usually require the use of more fertilisers and pesticides, which can lead to more pollution. Use of nonwood fibres also makes chemical recovery more difficult because of the material's high silica component. In addition, nonwood fibres are bulky, expensive to transport and tend to be available only seasonally.

In industrialised countries, concerns have focused equally, if not more so, on the ever-increasing volumes of waste paper being created. Disposal of paper products in landfill sites leads to emissions of the greenhouse gas methane. Driven by numerous government, private-sector and voluntary initiatives worldwide, paper recovery rates rose from 23% in 1970 to 43% in 1999. In industrialised countries, it is estimated that household garbage is constituted of 38% paper, 18% yard trimmings, 8% metals, 8% plastic, 7% glass and 7% foodwaste.

Improved operations in pulp and paper mills is an urgent need on both environmental and health grounds. Conservative estimates suggest that bringing all mills worldwide up to a uniform "good" environmental standard could require an investment of about US$ 20 billion, plus annual operating costs of more than US$ 8 billion.

In order to conserve the earth’s resources, it is important to keep as much waste as possible out of landfill sites by recovering valuable raw materials. This process reduces pollution and saves energy that would have been expended when making products from virgin or unrecycled raw materials and allows for better optimization of natural resources. In reviewing the tangible advantages of recycling, it is important to account for "avoided disposal costs" which is so often disregarded.

The benefits of recycling paper are indisputable. One ton of waste paper saves about 17 pine trees, 462 gallons of oil and reduces landfill by about 3m³, some relief for already stressed ecosystems. Commercial and residential waste paper often accounts for more than 40% of landfilled waste. Eliminating this would almost double landfill lives. Furthermore, recycled fibre cuts the energy required to produce paper by up to 40%, decreasing the need for the so-called "hidden flows", resources consumed but not directly involved in product flow, and often disregarded or underestimated. In addition, air and water pollution is also reduced.

The propensity to recycle is driven by a combination of social, environmental, technical, economic and legislative factors and local measures that may be implemented to boost recycling include tax on landfilled waste, product levies, government or institutional assistance for SMME's collecting waste and transport rebates for recycled material.

Sources include: World Resources Institute; Mondi Recycling; American Forest and Paper Association; Packaging Council of South Africa; Confederation of European Paper Industries; Resource Recycling Systems Inc.; Office of Waste Reduction Services, State of Michigan; Pick 'n Pay Enviro Facts Project