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Volume CXXXII, Number 10 |
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Bowdoin and Boise don't mix
Paper cups excommunicated from campus, "Can Wars" in the dorms, electronic information for classes. While students and Sustainable Bowdoin move to remove unnecessary waste, College administrators do the opposite. As the campus body prints double-sided sheets on Lehua and Peony, Bowdoin is under contract with a corporation targeted by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Boise Cascade Corporation, headquartered in Boise, Idaho, is a major distributor of office products and building materials and an integrated manufacturer and distributor of paper and wood products. In March, 2002, the U.S. Justice Department and the E.P.A. announced a comprehensive Clean Air Act (CAA) agreement with Boise that required reductions of up to 95 percent of the harmful emissions from the company's eight plywood and particle board plants.
Previously, the corporation had modified and expanded its panel board operations for two decades without installing the proper air pollution control equipment to reduce harmful emissions as required by the Prevention of Significant Deterioration regulations. Boise is the largest multinational logger of old growth forests as well as the largest logger of public land in the United States. The global and American old growth forests have been depleted by seventy-eight and ninety-six percent, respectively. Boise is also one of the top importers of old growth wood from Chile, which contains over one-third of the remaining rainforests, and holds the rights to Chile's largest chip mill.
While students recycle bottles, paper, and other waste in College receptacles, the College fully supports a corporation that is explicitly environmentally unsound. Schools across the country have been questioning their commitments to logging corporations; Oberlin College and Middlebury are currently in the process of phasing out their corrections with Boise.
The paper most commonly purchased on our campus is Boise's Aspen 30-composed of 30 percent recycled material. There is no excuse for Bowdoin relying on paper products that are 70 percent virgin fibers. The fact that 100 percent-recycled paper can raise cost by 15 percent appears to be the College's sole motivation for this environmental negligence. The Administration also refuses to impose a recycled content limit on departments. An alternate company that produces 100 percent recycled, chlorine free, and post consumer-waste paper at a lower cost than Boise has been ignored.
Bowdoin's decision to use Boise as its supplier reflects a dismissal of environmental implications because of the small financial savings, or simply a lack of motivation to initiate a new contract. This silent rejection of 'Earth-friendly' options unacceptably undercuts the efforts of countless students and staff members in their efforts to be environmentally conscious.
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