Day 058 - 30 Nov 94 - Page 60


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It was functioning to my certain memory well
     3        over 40 years ago, because one used to take packets of
     4        newspaper on one's bike down to the plant in town for a bit
     5        of pocket money.
     6        A.  During the war in America I remember as a boy scout
     7        collecting vast quantities of paper to be used for
     8        recycling and, unfortunately, the people responsible for it
     9        allowed the roof to leak and it was totally unusable.
    10
    11   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It goes back a long way.  It is a question to
    12        what extent.
    13        A.  It is an idea that has been going on.  That is right.
    14
    15   MR. MORRIS:  The forestry industry recognises, does it not, well
    16        you imply that in your statement, that in recent times the
    17        demand for recycled paper has grown under environmental
    18        media and political pressure.  Is that something that is
    19        recognised by the forest industry?
    20        A.  Yes, it is recognised.  I think in the top paragraph
    21        which I put in which is perhaps an interesting comment,
    22        there is a state of affairs in the economics of it as well
    23        as the environmental side where they maybe reach a stage
    24        where there is no market for the thinnings of the forest
    25        and the top ends of the trees if recycling reaches an
    26        outstandingly and completely disproportionate element of
    27        the whole of paper usage.  I think that is an exaggeration,
    28        but it is a danger of which the forestry industry is aware.
    29
    30   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Can I ask you about your conclusion because
    31        the matters complained of here are alleged to have been
    32        published in late 1989, early 1990, and the conclusion is
    33        written in the present tense.  We are now in 1994.  How far
    34        back in time, if your conclusion were correct, would that
    35        go - true in 1990, 1986, 1982?  I remember perfectly well
    36        what you said about 1985, but for how long, in your view,
    37        has your conclusion been true?
    38        A.  I would draw the conclusion from observation and
    39        listening to people who are in the industry in specific
    40        was.  I was extremely impressed with Enso-Guzeit, for
    41        example, and their extreme efforts to involve themselves in
    42        improving against pollution which is a major concern of the
    43        paper industry.  They could only do this as they could
    44        afford to do it.  The same thing applies with forestry,
    45        that the intense effort now to balance the environment with
    46        economic forestry has come about because the postwar
    47        planting has reached a stage where there is a value to it.
    48        It has come into the market and, in consequence, it has
    49        been possible to reapply techniques of forestry which 10
    50        years ago one could not afford. 
    51 
    52        What I would say is that this has been a continuing 
    53        progress, that when I joined the Forestry Commission from
    54        the timber industry, not from the paper world, not from the
    55        forestry world but from the timber industry, I was very
    56        surprised to find out in 1989 how much attention was being
    57        paid to changing the pattern of forestry to meet
    58        environmental purposes as opposed to economic purposes.
    59        That was there and is to me evidentially there in all the
    60        records, including the annual reports of the Forestry

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