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Finland plans to create a circular bioeconomy that runs on wood

9 points by NoRagrets 5y ago

timonoko 5y ago
Unfortunately Russia just decided that they wont export unprocessed woodstuffs to Finland anymore. This Bioeconomy Perpetuum Mobile was based very much on this excess. Michael Moore described in his movie what happened in Colorado, when they started to use logging left-overs in energy production. They had to use oil-based chemicals to restore soil nutrients.
usr1106 5y ago
The article seems to be behind a paywall (on my phone, did not try how to get around it). The introduction does not look promising. In Finland trees are not cut selectively, whole areas get cut, nothing left. Public awareness to change the forest industry or even wider economy into a more sustainable direction just does not exist. There are only 5 millions Finns, but the ecological footprint of each of them is huge. The general narrative is that Finland has clean nature. Yes, there is more nature per capita in many other countries, but it's being destroyed with ever increasing speed. I have never heard of any project like the headline hints to. I don't doubt it exists, but I doubt it has nationwide impact. The desire for change is just not there. Disclaimer: Foreigner living in Finlad for decades.
- hulitu 5y ago
  The same in germany. For some people the idea of forest is not an ecosystem but "a lot of trees planted together". And then they scream about forest fires (in a normal forest the ground has some moisture and trees do not grow so close to each other) and tree eating bugs (the trees are packed together so the bug has an easy job traveling to its next victim and the absence of predators does not help). These "forests" offer 2 things: graveyard silence and darkness so they are a good predictor for the future of humanity.
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  So just to clear up a few facts. The whole area being cut is called "avohakkuu". It was forbidden by law to just cut a few trees here and there ("harsintahakkuu"). The thing that was feared was that people would cut the biggest and best trees and leave the worst ones there, making the forest worse as a whole. The laws have recently been changed. Now you can do partial cutting but in a certain way. There have been always laws about mandatory planting of saplings after doing cutting. The forestry sector is quite strictly controlled in Finland. Almost everything is, really. One can compare that to the mining sector for example, where laws are weirdly permissive. More (in Finnish) in https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harsintahakkuu https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harsintahakkuu This post didn't contain any opinions whether something is good or bad, just trying to give people basic information.

9 points by NoRagrets 5y ago

Unfortunately Russia just decided that they wont export unprocessed woodstuffs to Finland anymore. This Bioeconomy Perpetuum Mobile was based very much on this excess. Michael Moore described in his movie what happened in Colorado, when they started to use logging left-overs in energy production. They had to use oil-based chemicals to restore soil nutrients.

usr1106 5y ago

The article seems to be behind a paywall (on my phone, did not try how to get around it). The introduction does not look promising. In Finland trees are not cut selectively, whole areas get cut, nothing left. Public awareness to change the forest industry or even wider economy into a more sustainable direction just does not exist. There are only 5 millions Finns, but the ecological footprint of each of them is huge. The general narrative is that Finland has clean nature. Yes, there is more nature per capita in many other countries, but it's being destroyed with ever increasing speed. I have never heard of any project like the headline hints to. I don't doubt it exists, but I doubt it has nationwide impact. The desire for change is just not there. Disclaimer: Foreigner living in Finlad for decades.

hulitu 5y ago
The same in germany. For some people the idea of forest is not an ecosystem but "a lot of trees planted together". And then they scream about forest fires (in a normal forest the ground has some moisture and trees do not grow so close to each other) and tree eating bugs (the trees are packed together so the bug has an easy job traveling to its next victim and the absence of predators does not help). These "forests" offer 2 things: graveyard silence and darkness so they are a good predictor for the future of humanity.
Gravityloss 5y ago
So just to clear up a few facts. The whole area being cut is called "avohakkuu". It was forbidden by law to just cut a few trees here and there ("harsintahakkuu"). The thing that was feared was that people would cut the biggest and best trees and leave the worst ones there, making the forest worse as a whole. The laws have recently been changed. Now you can do partial cutting but in a certain way. There have been always laws about mandatory planting of saplings after doing cutting. The forestry sector is quite strictly controlled in Finland. Almost everything is, really. One can compare that to the mining sector for example, where laws are weirdly permissive. More (in Finnish) in https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harsintahakkuu https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harsintahakkuu This post didn't contain any opinions whether something is good or bad, just trying to give people basic information.