Please help me find some information on deforestation and deforestation

WWF: Toilet paper and other household paper products threaten the world’s forest resources

International online news: European environmentalists recently stated that European toilet paper manufacturers and other household paper product manufacturers have been Not enough recyclable products are available to consumers, so they actually contribute to deforestation around the world.

According to a report by Agence France-Presse on November 20, Duncan Berard, head of the European Forest Program of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an international environmental organization headquartered in Switzerland, said: "In Around the world, about 270,000 trees are flushed down toilets and drains or thrown away as useless garbage every day. Such use of forest resources is really wasteful and unnecessary.”

< p> Relevant research by the World Wildlife Fund shows that the five largest disposable paper product manufacturers in Europe are Procter and Gamble, SCA Paper Company (SCA), Kimberly Clark, and Meica Tissue Company (Metsa Tissue) and Georgia-Pacific Packaging Company (Georgia Pacific). These five manufacturers control about 70% of the European paper products market, and in most of the products they produce, the content of renewable fibers is very low.

WWF said in its communiqué that this means that "unused fiber" obtained from some of the world's natural woodlands and tree plantations is being harvested without the knowledge of consumers. , was treated as garbage. Bollard said: "When consumers go to the bathroom, they do not realize that they may be a threat to the world's forest resources."

According to reports, the annual European toilet paper trade totals about 8.5 billion euros ( Approximately US$10 billion), accounting for 26% of total global sales. Each European uses an average of 13 kilograms of paper products every year. At present, WWF has asked these paper product manufacturers to more clearly inform consumers how much renewable fiber is contained in household paper products, and recommend that they purchase renewable products. (International Online Exclusive Information Wang Gaoshan)

United Nations: China’s afforestation has slowed down the decline of the earth’s forests

Xinhua News: The United States’ “New York Times” published an article on the 15th stating that China Planting trees benefits the world.

China’s extensive reforestation efforts have slowed the shrinking of the planet’s forests, but tropical deforestation is still increasing, many in the past, according to a new United Nations report. Areas that have never been logged. The investigation report was published by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on its website yesterday.

Hosni Rakani, FAO Assistant Director-General for Forests, said: “While promising progress is being made in many places, unfortunately, forest resources are still declining at an alarming rate. "The rapid decline or degradation of forests"

Some forest experts say the slowing rate of forest area loss is encouraging, but biologists believe that the increase in forest area through afforestation has increased. Most contain some of the plant and animal diversity that was destroyed with the destruction of primary forests. In China, overall forest cover is expanding, while at the same time, the area of ??tropical forests is shrinking. This report compares forest development trends in the last five years with those throughout the 1990s. In the report, South America's annual net loss of forest area exceeded that of Africa.

Mette Wilkie of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said that Asia has changed particularly dramatically in 10 years: it lost about 7,800 square kilometers of forest area per year in the 1990s, but since 2000 Since then its forest area has increased by nearly 10,000 square kilometers every year. But almost all of this change has occurred as a result of China's new forest policies, she said. Elsewhere in Asia, tropical forests are still being cleared at an increasing rate, the report said.

The European Union is responsible for the destruction of large tracts of forest in poor countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America

Xinhua News: According to Reuters, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued a statement on the 21st The report said that EU member states illegally import large quantities of timber from economically backward countries, accelerating the destruction of these countries' main forest resources.

The report stated that the United Kingdom is "Europe's largest importer of illegal timber" and is responsible for the disappearance of 600,000 hectares of forest resources in Asia, Africa and Latin America every year. This figure is more than twice the size of Luxembourg.

A report by the World Wildlife Fund, headquartered in Switzerland, believes that this kind of indiscriminate deforestation is motivated by commercial interests, but it deprives local people of their livelihoods and will lead to Africa’s worst economic crisis in the next 10 years. and the loss of vast tracts of forest in Indonesia.

The organization’s forest experts completed this survey report after studying the timber trade status of EU countries with Amazon Basin countries, Congo Basin countries and East African countries, as well as Indonesia and Russia. The experts also examined the situation in the Baltic states that have become EU members.

Illegal logging refers to the indiscriminate logging of trees by some illegal companies that violate the forest protection measures of the relevant countries. The illegally logged timber is smuggled into another country before reaching the world market. The UK ranks first in Europe in terms of illegal timber imports, followed by Finland, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands.

The report believes that it is crucial for the EU to issue an order to strictly prohibit illegal imports of timber as soon as possible to change the current policy of encouraging its 25 member states to reach import agreements with timber-producing countries. policy.

Duncan Pollard, head of the World Wildlife Fund’s European Forest Conservation Program, believes: If the EU wants to make a difference in protecting the world’s most important forest resources and helping poor countries get out of poverty, It must take tougher action.

Andrew Lee, an official of the foundation, pointed out: Britain has made "poverty alleviation" a central task during its term as the EU rotating presidency. He said: "The UK's huge consumption of timber has robbed the income of Indonesia and African countries, while major international companies involved in the timber trade have made a lot of money

Starting from the discontinuation of disposable chopsticks in Qingdao

2005-9-20 11:23:44

Qingdao City has recently issued regulations. From early September 2005 to January 30, 2006, manufacturers in Qingdao City will not be able to Reproduction of disposable chopsticks, non-biodegradable plastic tableware, plastic bags and other products that cause "white pollution" will impose a maximum fine of 20,000 on enterprises, units or individuals that produce, sell and use these items.

Qingdao Municipal Economic and Trade Commission, Municipal Industry and Commerce Bureau, Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, and Municipal Construction Committee recently jointly issued the "Notice on Prohibiting the Use of Disposable Chopsticks and Non-degradable Plastic Tableware and Packaging Bags". It is estimated that 1 million pairs of disposable chopsticks are currently used in Qingdao every day, and it is difficult to count the degradable plastic packaging used in farmers' markets. At present, there is no unit in Qingdao to recycle and utilize these food waste at the Qingdao Municipal Economic and Trade Commission market outlet. The person in charge of the website introduced their considerations for issuing this announcement.

Audio——

The person in charge of the branch office: This matter was first raised in 2000, when environmental pollution began to emerge. From the perspective of environmental protection and environmental pollution control, we have issued normative documents, which include the division of responsibilities between management and law enforcement units, and what to do if there is a violation of this requirement. . This time, the country, provinces and cities have proposed to create a conservation-oriented society. We can take a step forward in the catering sector. We can learn from the previous individual division of labor and the previous rules from the perspective of building a conservation-oriented society. We have made new requirements.

Moderator: To completely stop the production of disposable chopsticks, what do you think will be the difficulty in promoting these companies?

Networks Head of the Department: Qingdao is not an independent or isolated market. It includes surrounding production companies, including production companies in Shandong Province and outside the province. This situation is not uncommon. Consumers consider it from a health perspective and have hygienic consumption. habits.

Now we are giving catering companies a buffer period. We understand that some provinces and cities in China also have some substitutes. During this transition period, there is a technical connection in this regard. Now is a transitional period. Choose other alternative products so that you won't be caught off guard when the time comes.

Moderator: What might this alternative product look like?

Person in charge of the branch office: After the announcement was sent out, there was a huge response from the society, including some substitute companies outside the province also called us. This substitute, including quality and cost, is much lower than the current wooden chopsticks and bamboo chopsticks. Moderator: Generally speaking, what is the attitude of these merchants and enterprises? The person in charge of the branch office: From the perspective of ordinary people, most of them welcome it, because saving is a matter for the whole society. The feedback from companies and merchants is relatively calm, and companies know more information than we do. They also feel that there are some substitutes that will not add a lot of cost to them.

In many hotels and restaurants, disposable catering supplies, including disposable chopsticks, disposable paper cups, lunch boxes, etc., can be found everywhere. Disposable wooden chopsticks, in particular, have rapidly become popular since their introduction in the 1980s, and have now become an indispensable dining utensil on the dining table. So why are disposable wooden chopsticks so popular?

A restaurant owner expressed the business’s considerations: We use at least more than 4,000 pairs of disposable chopsticks a month. Disposable chopsticks are cheap and easy to use. In a certain commodity market, you can buy a hundred pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks for two yuan. Disposable wooden chopsticks are indeed cheap.

A waiter at a restaurant said that the first thing his restaurant provided to consumers was reusable sterilized chopsticks, but many consumers asked for disposable wooden chopsticks instead. It is difficult to rest assured about the food quality and environmental hygiene of small and medium-sized restaurants, which makes consumers show strong dependence on disposable products.

According to relevant data, our country consumes 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, consumes about 22 million cubic meters of wood, needs to cut down about 25 million trees, and reduces the forest area by 2 million square meters. If these chopsticks were connected end to end, it would be equivalent to circling the Earth's equator 330 times!

The waste of disposable wooden chopsticks is not limited to wood. Most disposable wooden chopsticks are packed with a layer of plastic film. Once this layer of plastic film is torn off, it becomes useless and pollutes the environment, and the petroleum used to produce the plastic film is wasted.

In addition, disposable chopsticks may also become a killer that endangers human health.

Everyone has the experience of using disposable chopsticks when dining out, and many people are only willing to use disposable chopsticks when dining out, thinking that this method is more hygienic and safer. But recent studies have proven that these disposable chopsticks are far more harmful than sterilized non-disposable tableware.

Dong Jinshi, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing Environmental Science Society, who specializes in disposable tableware, said that compared with the color of ordinary wood, the color of disposable chopsticks in many restaurants is very white, which is not a good thing. The raw materials used by regular manufacturers to produce disposable chopsticks are wood with relatively good texture and do not require special processing. However, in order to reduce costs, some small workshops use low-quality wood, which looks darker. In order to "whiten" the chopsticks, some criminals use sulfur fumigation and bleaching.

After sulfur gas bleaching, a large amount of sulfur dioxide will be produced, and the sulfur dioxide will solidify when it is cold. Therefore, when eating with such chopsticks, sulfur dioxide can easily solidify into the respiratory tract with the flow of air, causing coughs, asthma and other diseases.

In the mid-1980s, with the booming market economy, the accelerated pace of people's lives and the development of tourism, disposable chopsticks developed rapidly. In order to prevent the spread of diseases, my country has begun to promote disposable chopsticks, and many restaurants have also begun to use disposable chopsticks.

In the mid-1990s, people began to realize the environmental problems caused by chopsticks. Plastic bags, plastic lunch boxes, and wooden chopsticks are discarded along roads and railways; indiscriminate deforestation caused the 1998 floods. These phenomena have once again attracted people's attention to disposable chopsticks. Meanwhile, other Asian countries are also starting to pay attention to disposable chopsticks. South Korea began using metal chopsticks to replace disposable wooden chopsticks six years ago.

China's environmentalists are already waging war on this simple, convenient eating utensil that does away with disposable chopsticks. Use a spoon consciously. Driver Kang Dahu often does transportation. Every time he goes to a restaurant to eat, he takes out his own chopsticks. After finishing his meal, he washed his chopsticks and put them into a small cloth bag that he carried with him, taking practical actions to resist the use of disposable chopsticks. Every time the waiters in the restaurant saw him doing this, they laughed at him. But he never wavered.

Zhang Zhe, 24, became an environmental volunteer when he was in college. She organized a team in college that brought their own spoons and chopsticks. At first, they only had 5 people, but later they grew to more than 200 people. The volunteers also successfully persuaded school cafeterias to stop using disposable chopsticks.

Zhu Shuiqing, head of the Student Green Association of Harbin Institute of Technology, said that when he first went to college, after eating in the cafeteria, he could see several large buckets of used disposable chopsticks. In 1999, the Green Association proposed to the school to eliminate disposable chopsticks and advocated students to use bamboo chopsticks. The school quickly purchased several new disinfection machines to relieve everyone's worries about using bamboo chopsticks. Nowadays, disposable chopsticks can no longer be seen in the cafeteria of Harbin Institute of Technology.

Speaker——

Student: In the past, in our school cafeteria, we used disposable chopsticks. We mobilized our entire school to bring their own spoons to eat. We would put up a poster in the cafeteria every day to publicize our opposition to disposable chopsticks and to eliminate disposable chopsticks in the school. This matter lasted for a year before the school cafeteria actually agreed to replace them with disposable chopsticks. It bought a complete set of disinfection equipment, and now we have eliminated disposable chopsticks in school. But in society, we can see a lot of restaurants that only use disposable chopsticks. In some schools, we still see many canteens using disposable chopsticks. So we thought that we should use our experience to change everyone's habit of using disposable chopsticks. The disposable chopsticks project has been launched since last year.

Moderator: When you promote this environmentally friendly concept of not using disposable chopsticks to your classmates in school, do you think it is easy for everyone to accept it? Student: I think disposable chopsticks are relatively easy for everyone to accept. If you use disposable chopsticks every day, there are about 40,000 people in our school, and 120,000 pairs of chopsticks are used every day.

Not long ago, a company issued such a rule, which caused quite a shock among employees: In order to practice economy and inherit virtue, starting from August 28, all employees of our company must eat out by themselves when dining out. Bring chopsticks. Anyone who violates the regulations will be fined 10 yuan per person. Those who violate the rules three times in a row or refuse to comply will be expelled.

An employee said that in order not to be fined, he had to bring chopsticks to work, but he felt very awkward. Saving money is a good thing, but setting fines in the system is bad. Some employees said: There is no way to monitor whether it is used or not, and it has little meaning in saving itself. Bringing and using are two different things. Some employees who agree with the regulations believe that bringing their own chopsticks is a contribution to the environment if it does no harm to themselves.

The supervisor of a restaurant said that we do not welcome bringing your own tableware. Guests bringing their own chopsticks save the hotel's financial and human resources. Manager Liu of a high-end restaurant said that under normal circumstances, customers are not allowed to bring their own chopsticks, otherwise the resulting hygiene disputes cannot be resolved. If the guest insists on bringing it, the hotel will not interfere, but it must say hello in advance and the guest must ensure that the use of chopsticks is hygienic. Hotels and restaurants generally use bamboo chopsticks, which must be disinfected before use. Bringing your own chopsticks does not make much sense to the hotel.

The widespread use of disposable products was once regarded by Western developed countries as a revolution in the field of consumption. This consumption method brings many advantages to consumers, such as simplicity, convenience, and hygiene. However, while disposable products bring convenience to people, they also increasingly expose their excessive waste of resources.

In South Korea, the government explicitly prohibits the use of disposable wooden chopsticks, and people have become accustomed to using steel chopsticks when eating. In Japan, although the use of disposable tableware is not prohibited, according to statistics released by the Japanese government, of the more than 25 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks consumed in Japan every year, only 3% are produced domestically, and the rest are imported from our country. import.

European countries rarely use disposable items, and disposable tableware is even less common in restaurants.

Many supermarkets use large paper bags for customers to put items in. Plastic bags are charged for in order to limit the environmental pollution caused by plastic bags.

At the third meeting of the 10th Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference this year, Yu Yanhua, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, put forward Proposal No. 0776, “Recommendations on Restricting the Use of Disposable Chopsticks in Beijing.” Member Yu Yanhua said that in Beijing, the production, sales and use of disposable chopsticks have become a phenomenon that people turn a blind eye to in their lives. The use of disposable chopsticks facilitates our lives and meets our hygienic needs for dining utensils, but the price paid is the waste of wood resources and the loss of precious forest resources.

Audio——

Host: Why did you pay attention to the issue of disposable chopsticks at that time?

Yu Yanhua: In recent years, some small and medium-sized restaurants have used disposable chopsticks more often. But I think we are a big country that uses chopsticks. The use of a large number of disposable chopsticks is a huge waste of wood. It should be said that our country is not very rich in resources now. If such a large amount of waste continues, I think it will be detrimental to our national production. And I also heard that some developed countries, especially in Asia, like Japan, also use chopsticks, but they rarely use disposable chopsticks. When making the proposal, I also listened to the opinions of the residents around us. When we held a symposium, everyone unanimously opposed the use of disposable chopsticks. Although some labor has been deployed in the production of disposable chopsticks and some companies have gained some benefits, it is not suitable in the long run. I think disposable chopsticks are only one aspect of conservation. It should be said that we are now vigorously promoting a conservation-oriented country, so we should start from every little thing around us. Of course, we also asked whether we should bring our own chopsticks and tableware when dining, but it is not realistic. But I think it would be very good if restaurants could pay attention and not use disposable chopsticks.

Moderator: When you proposed this proposal, you thought that if this work could be carried out more effectively, what do you think are the key links?

Yu Yanhua: I think this link should start with publicity, and work should be done to change people's concepts. But I think it is not difficult to change the concept. After all, disposable chopsticks have just emerged recently. Disposable chopsticks are not hygienic in production, people just think they are hygienic. In fact, in some small workshops, disposable chopsticks are not hygienic. I feel that there is still not enough publicity, because enterprise production involves the placement of labor and government taxation, which must have certain difficulties. Therefore, the government should strengthen its efforts and make some efforts on the placement of labor force and the transformation of enterprises.

Moderator: After you proposed this proposal, the Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau also gave you a reply. What was their reply?

Yu Yanhua: Their reply was that they have been working hard in this area. Now, at their request, mid- to high-end restaurants basically no longer use disposable chopsticks, but a large number of small restaurants still use them. The level of attention needs to be further improved and they should be gradually banned. Therefore, a ban may not necessarily be enough.

Member Yu Yanhua said that the publicity of "the negative effects of using disposable chopsticks" should be strengthened through colorful forms, so that the public can truly understand what kind of consequences the convenience of personal use of disposable chopsticks will bring to the entire society. Consequences, thus psychologically agreeing with the necessity and urgency of limiting the use of disposable chopsticks. Public understanding and recognition will enhance the feasibility of public policies and greatly reduce the cost of policy implementation. However, the introduction of relevant regulations can only be a guide. Gradually eliminating the use of disposable chopsticks that have become a consumption habit requires the joint efforts of all members of society.

The fast-paced life and the pursuit of high quality make us choose disposable products without hesitation. The cheapness of large-scale industrial production makes us feel at ease. What’s wrong with spending a little money and buying something convenient? As a result, one-time consumption has become popular. However, just when people are lavishly enjoying the convenience, shocking waste has already begun.

Saving focuses on updating ideas and changing habits. Moderate consumption and refusal to waste are not only manifestations of responsible citizenship, but also a necessity for sustainable development. Building a "conservation-oriented society" is not just a slogan, but must be implemented into the actions of each of us.

Including some very small savings, such as unplugging electrical appliances when they are not in use; water at home can be used twice; turning up the air conditioner in the office by a few degrees, etc. These are some inconspicuous savings behaviors, but if everyone develops such habits and perseveres, the benefits should be huge.