Angelo V.

Guevarra

October 1, 2016

BSES-4A

Prof. Danica Solis

Critique Paper
NATUREs FILAMENTS

The paper is all about innovation of technology, on how modernism can save the natural
capital. The author discusses his point by reviewing the history of early industry of cotton, on how it
became so significant in the world. These fibers expand not only throughout the history of industry but
through cultural and biological evolution. Early in their cultural evolution, humans began to rig
remarkably strong natural fibers, often a coproduct of food production, to create clothes, baskets,
ropes, sinews, houses, and many other artifacts. Over time, inventors figured out how to break the
chemical bonds of wood to create paper, and then how to turn cellulose into resin and thence into
many industrial products.
He also indicated the consequences of producing these fibers, in which these things are grown
in unsustainable ways. Half of all textile fibers come from cotton, whose cultivation uses 1/4 of all
agrochemicals and of all insecticides. Moreover, the petrochemical industry, which makes the building
blocks for synthetic fibers, is also a notable polluter and uses a nonrenewable resource. The bigger
context of how big the issue of fiber is can be looked through its total forest harvest. The annual forest
harvest is more than twice the weight of all U.S. purchases of metals. While sustainable harvesting
and forest management practices are known and often commercially viable, they are not yet widely
practiced, so conventional forestry remains a prominent cause of widespread harm to natural capital,
degrading natural forests more valuable ecosystem services. He presented data on how paper
becomes overly significant in economy. U.S. offices paper use soared from 0.85 to 1.4 trillion sheets
(about 4.2 to 7 million tons) just between 1981 and 1984.
These wasteful ways of using fibers that cause overexploitation of natural capital has change
since the introduction of electronic storages such as multi-gigabyte hard disks and CD-ROMS. These
storages can keep an entire librarys worth of data and be search for a blink of an eye. Also the
electronic messages or E-mails can be used as a good alternative to exchange messages in just a
second. With this switching from paper to electric communication, it can save paper, time, and money
in the most complex commercial transactions normally requiring very voluminous documents.
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These innovations led to an efficient use of our forest. It helps save a lot of forest by not
overexploiting the woods into use of fibers. The author used a calculation on how to account the
savings by getting the factor saving. He calculated in his paper that there would be about Factor 26
savings, or 96% reduction in demand for acres of pulpwood forest harvest. Paper recycling was also
tackled. The Greenbay Packaging Company has recycled for about 200,000 tons of waste paper.
I concur to the authors idea that efficiency and substitution throughout the value chains of
forest products can displace most or all cutting of natural forests. It is important to keep in my mind
those valuable roles of the natural capital is in a limited use, therefore should take time to refurnished
and not be overexploited and abused. We should consider that the fibers we used to our everyday
work should not cost the earth. However, innovations and technology can still be harmful to our
environment. The author didnt gave an example on how modernism can still greatly affect the
environment. Consequences should be considered for example, there are these electronic garbages,
which are product of this later development of systems and many more.

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