Soybean Oil & Paper

Soy-diesel looking for more oil from the bean.
This is The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.
This week the Obama administration called for an increase in the use of bio-diesel.
It’s supposed to make big-rigs and trucks run cleaner.
But there's not enough soy-bean oil around to make biodiesel on the cheap.
Shawn Allee is here and you’ve been talking to a guy who says we might be one step closer to fixing that.

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Tom Clemente is a kind of true-believer in biodiesel.
He studies plant biology at the University of Nebraska.
Clemente says the problem is, we use pricey soy-bean oil to make biodiesel.
CLEMENTE: the downside is there's just not enough of the oil to really make a dent on petroleum.
Clemente figures scientists can manipulate genes inside soy beans to boost oil content ... but no one knew exactly where the genes are.
Recently, though, scientists completed a big-picture map of soy's basic genetic make-up.
Clemente hopes that'll speed up development of oily soy beans - just for biodiesel.
CLEMENTE: Really getting a bio-based sustainable fuel from some sort of cropping system, the production's going to have be really up there.
Clemente hopes we get enough biodiesel to clean up the nation's dirtiest vehicles, such as construction equipment and city buses.
For The Environment Report, I'm Shawn Allee.
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This is The Environment Report.

When the computer-age took off in the 1990s, lots of people thought we’d use a lot less paper. But that hasn’t happened. Julie Grant reports on why environmentalists are so concerned about all the paper we’re still using in our offices and homes.


Allen Hershkowitz is a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He says Americans use 7-times more paper than the average person on the planet. And computer printouts are just the beginning.

Packaging, cigarettes, tissues and toilet paper. Hershkowitz has seen firsthand the devastation the demand for all that paper its causing.

HERSHKOWITZ: ANCIENT FORESTS, FORESTS THAT HAVE EXISTED WAY BEFORE CRIST AND MOSES AND MOHOMMED, FOR 10-THOUSAND YEARS, ARE BEING CUT DOWN FOR TOILET PAPER. A PRODUCT WE USE FOR 2-3 SECONDS. THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. [:14]


Hershkowitz says this deforestation causes more global warming pollution than all the trucks, buses, planes and ships in the world combined.

He scoffs at products like 3-ply toilet paper – and compares using them to driving a gas-guzzling Hummer.

In Europe and Asia, much more of the toilet paper is made from recycled paper. Americans get beat up in the international press for allowing their delicate buttocks to devastate the world’s forests.

For five years, the environmentalist group Greenpeace held protests against the Kimberly Clark Corporation, maker of Kleenex tissues, for cutting Canada’s Boreal Forest and other forests around the world for its products.

But when Kimberly Clark recently agreed to use 40-percent recycled fiber in their tissue products, Greenpeace ended its protests. The concession may be good news to environmentalists, but it does not please late night comedian Stephen Colbert.

COLBERT: HAVE YOU SEEN RECYCLED TOILET PAPER? ///ENVIRONMENTALISTS, I SWEAR, IF YOU TAKE AWAY MY PLUSH TOILET PAPER, I’M JUST GOING TO USE THE NEXT SOFTEST THING – SPOTTED OWLS. [:08]

Most paper makers aren’t opposed to using recycled material in their products. Dan Sandoval is an editor at the publication Recycling Today.

He says most cardboard boxes and newspapers are already made from recycled paper.

And that recycled toilet tissue? He says that’s usually made from old office paper. The stuff we use for printing and writing.

But a lot of times office waste is all thrown together – and isn’t clean enough to be recycled into something new.

SANDOVAL: YOU KNOW, WHEN YOU’RE COLLECTING IT ALL TOGETHER HERE, YOU’RE GOING TO GET SOME TELEPHONE BOOKS, SOME POST-IT NOTES AND THINGS LIKE THAT THAT PEOPLE ARE THROWING TOGETHER. PLASTIC WINDOWED ENVELOPES. SOME OF THAT STUFF IS LIKE, IT’S KIND OF IFFY ON THAT. SO YOU GET MORE MATERIAL, BUT THE QUALITY GOES DOWN. [:16]

Still, Sandoval says the trend for companies around the world is toward more recycled content. Environmentalists want paper companies to move faster.
And they say consumers also need to do their part. In the office, they want people to print less, and at home, they’re asking people to stop buying toilet paper that’s 3 layers thick.