Why do companies based in paper products (toilet paper, paper towels, plates/bowls, etc) use trees for their products, instead of faster growing plants like bamboo or hemp?

Question

Using plants that grow quicker and use less water seems like a better business decision to me.

In: 211

Answer 1

Most logging, and certainly softwood logging, is in places where there’s going to be a forest anyway regardless of whether you’re harvesting trees from sections of it every twenty years or so.

They’re not out there with sprinklers… the water being used is water that’s naturally in the local ecosystem would be used by trees, and cycled back into the environment through transpiration, regardless of any logging activity.

The trees are also not normally cut down just for paper. A lot of the wood that gets turned into paper is byproduct and “waste” from the rest of the timber products that the logged trees are destined for.