We woke up to the sound of transport trucks zooming past the
turnout that we slept in last night. He counted three by the time I woke up to
hear my first. Andre told me they were loggers; fellow foragers in some strange
way, harvesting logs like Andre and I do for our evening campfires. After
breakfast, a medley of rescued and foraged dried fruits (blue and blackberries,
raisins, and coconut) topped with our delicious granola, we biked up the hill
in the direction of the trucks. The coastal forest was dense and rich and
decomposing, covered in moss, ferns, foxgloves and hedge nettle, and slimy
snails and slugs. After a few miles, biking through patches of sun and moist
crisp air, we reached the site of destruction. Two men, one clearly the boss,
greeted us with the same hesitant smile as the farmers we encountered. Like the farmers, they quickly warmed
up to Andre’s friendly curiosity. Bossman answered all of our questions. He told us that they are thinning, a
job offered by the U.S. National Forest Service that goes to the highest
bidder. This particular job is a 5-year project, and the contractor who won the
bid hired the contractor to whom we were speaking. He told us that they are
currently running two trucks, and that each truck carries out 8 loads of felled
trees a day, with about 50 or so trees stacked high on the truck. Right now,
they are not running at full capacity.
He said once the yarder comes, a system that acts as sort of a conveyor
belt for felled trees, they will be able to haul twice that amount. They can
only work for 6 months a year, from June to December, when they are required to
break so that the marbler bird can reproduce. On the ride down, I calculated
what that means… they’re hauling out at least 104,000 trees every year in this
site alone, and more than 200,000 when they are operating at full capacity. He
told us that because of “strict” regulations (200,000 trees a year doesn’t
sound so strict to me), they have to plant as many trees as they take, but it’s
hard to believe that actually happens.
After chatting up Bossman for 15 minutes or so, we hopped
back on our bikes and rode to an area of the forest that had not yet been cut.
Compared to the skeleton of a forest we just left, this patch was lush, the
floor blanketed by thick moss that depressed 4 or 5 inches with each step down,
bouncing back easily as I walked along. From beneath the moss, mushrooms sprung
up next to rotting logs. The sound of logging equipment filled the air as we
walked carefully around the hairy trees and large ferns, a constant reminder of
what was happening just a hillside away, what would soon be happening here.
And for what do we need all this wood? Well, 90% of all paper pulp is made
from wood, and production of paper accounts for about 35% of all felled
trees. Only about 16% of the trees
cut each year were planted for paper production, 9% comes from old growth
forests, and the remaining comes from second- or third-generation forests. We
use paper for all sorts of stuff, about 30% of it gets used for packaging, much
of which gets trashed immediately after the point-of-purchase. The average
American office worker uses about 500 disposable cups every year. Writing in a coffee shop just outside
of Salem, Andre and I are drinking out of ceramic mugs that we brought in from
the car, a habit I formed years ago in an effort to curb my own consumption and
waste. The average American also
uses about 50 pounds of toilet paper each year, roughly 50% more than the
average of other western countries or Japan. Given that 1 tree produces about
100 pounds of toilet paper, and there are almost 3.1 billion of us, roughly
153,502,775 trees are felled annually just so we can wipe our asses!
Toilet paper use is relatively new cultural phenomenon. I remember my mom telling us stories of
how she and her sister wiped with Sears Roebuck catalogs in the outhouse on
their family farm. In fact, the first product designed specifically for wiping
our derrieres were sheets of manila hemp that were infused with aloe, which
were invented in 1857 by Joseph Gayetty. He claimed that his medicinal sheets
prevented hemorrhoids, and was so pleased with his invention that had his name
printed on every sheet.
His success was limited, however, because like my mom and
her sisters, Americans used the catalog. After all, why pay for something that
came for free in the mail? Eventually, fancy hotels and drugstores started
carrying the product, soon made by the Scott Brothers, but because our culture
is so terribly embarrassed by bodily functions, people wouldn’t buy the stuff.
According to Dave Praeger, author of "Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped
by Its Grossest National Product,” even the Scott brothers were too ashamed to
take credit for their innovation until several years after they started
production. “No one wanted to ask for it by name," says Praeger, like the
modern-day condom or vaginal cream. By 1930, Hakle, a German company, began
using the slogan, "Ask for a roll of Hakle and you won't have to say
toilet paper!"
How, in just 80 years did we go from complete rejection to
using 50% more than other western countries? Toilet paper is just an example of how much we consume and
waste in this country relative to others.
In fact, no one produces more trash than the U.S (insert reality TV joke
here); we are just 5% of the world’s population and we generate 40% of the
world’s waste. Out here in the
forest, the fact that waste is a manmade concept has never been more
apparent. Nature has no landfills,
after all. Plants grow with the help of nutrients in the soil, animals eat the
plants, then insects and bacteria eat and decompose the animal dung and animal
remains. Finally, the decomposed waste nourishes the soil, and the soil helps
plants grow. A perfect, closed-loop system… nature seems to be ahead of the
game here – all the green builders and designers are talking about closed-loop
systems and she’s been at it forever.
Hmm.
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