Pulp and paper plants in RI still hazardous

JAKARTA (JP): Although they have been converted from the use of chlorine gas to organo-chlorine chemicals, all of Indonesia's pulp and paper plants continue to use toxic substances for bleaching, according to an Australian ecologist.

Although organo-chlorine chemicals are less toxic than chlorine gas, they are still dangerous to humans and animals that use the rivers polluted by the chemicals, Robert Cartmel, a former Greenpeace campaigner, told reporters yesterday.

Organo-chlorine chemicals are used in the bleaching process in pulp mills. The chemicals have been reported to cause cancer and to damage the human reproduction process, according to the London-based organization Greenpeace.

Cartmel, who spent 10 years with Greenpeace Australia, said that pulp and paper companies in Indonesia had continued to use chlorine compounds on the basis that they were cheap and produced good quality paper.

"Actually you cannot use these arguments because the quality you get by using the Totally Chlorine-Free (TCF) is every bit as good as the paper made using chlorine chemicals," he said at a press conference held at the headquarters of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment.

Cartmel displayed two paper samples, one produced in Indonesia using chlorine chemicals and another made in Sweden using the chlorine-free process, to prove his point.

"And in the overall calculations, the TCF mills could be cheaper than mills using organo-chlorines," he said, adding that the cost calculations included the ecological treatment the mills should undertake.

The Totally Chlorine-Free process is already used by 57 pulp and paper factories around the world, including Kimberly-Clark in Australia and Aracruz in Brazil.

They use ozone (O3), oxygen (O2) and hydrogen-peroxide (H2O2) and are closed-cycle mills which recycle the waste water from the bleaching process so that there are no toxic effects on the environment.

Cartmel said that a number of consultants were still encouraging the government in Indonesia to use chlorine chemicals.

Those consultants, which he refers as 'conservatives', see the environmentally-safe methods as tomorrow's technology, he said. "They just cannot take on a new idea," he said.

He said he also believed that there was collusion between the petrochemical industry, which supplies the toxic substances, and the pulp industry.

He said the Indonesian government should use the cleanest technology available, adding that "anything less is second best." (06)