Meeting Industry's Technical Information Needs for Addressing Strategic Environmental Issues and Trends, 1992 TAPPI Conference Proceedings

Our principal strategic environmental issue is development of a successful response to the sum of challenges posed by three societal sectors. These include the preservationist/activist community, the increasingly complex regulatory structure, and the physical communities, geographic areas, and consumer groups, with whom we interact. In turn, the principal strategic environmental trend at work is the growing societal expectation that the industry’s operations and continued growth be based on principles of ‘sustainable development’. The seriousness of this challenge is best exemplified by (a) the comprehensive scope of our environmental concerns, ranging from industrial forestry through primary manufacture and conversion of pulp and paper products, to recycle and ultimate disposal of consumer-used products, including also management of potential workplace chemical exposure, and environmental acceptability and consumer safety during product use, (b) growing difficulty in gaining approval for ‘green field’ projects, (c) increasingly restrictive regulatory and legislative proposals covering both products and processes, and (d) the global character of these concerns. The nature of our information needs and the means available for meeting them are discussed in detail and by example.