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5 Products Made From Trees to Stop Buying Now

The more products we consume that come from the world’s forests, the more trees that need to be cut down to meet the demands of a consumer-driven world. While new trees can certainly be planted to grow in their place, the rate at which we’re cutting down our trees exceeds the rate at which new trees can grow and replace the ones that were cut down.

According to The World Counts, only 10 percent of the world’s rainforests may be left by the year 2030. As a result, as many as 28,000 wildlife species may be extinct in the next 25 years due to deforestation.

It’s up to all of us to become more conscious of what we consume so that we don’t mistakenly support companies that contribute to deforestation. Here are just five types of products to consider scaling back on or avoiding altogether.

1. Paper products like books, stationery, envelopes, notepads,folders, notepads and printer paper.

If it’s made of paper, then it came from a tree. While it may be impossible to completely cut out paper products given that even product packaging is made from paper, there are at least some betteralternatives. More companies are now offering “tree free” alternatives to their paper products, such as products made from post-consumer waste (a.k.a. recycled paper). Other materials to look for in tree-free paper product alternatives include hemp, bamboo, kenaf, organic cotton and agri-pulp.

2. Food and beauty productsthat contain palm oil.

Asthemost efficient vegetable oil source, the profitability of palm oil has contributed to immense deforestation in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. You’ll need to check the ingredients on any food or cosmetic you buy to look for signs of palm oil. Check out this list of all the common ingredient names used to describe palm oil, including food and cosmetic brands known to use palm oil in their products.

3. Food products that containwood pulp.

In addition to being used to make paper products and textiles, wood pulp also goes by the name of cellulose, which is added to popular food products. It’s a cheap filler with no nutritional value that can typically be easily identified in the ingredients of any food product. You may want to have a look at these 15 food companies and a list of their products that contain cellulose so you’ll know to avoid them.

4. Furniture or other wood products made from over-harvested trees.

If you’ve got interior or exterior design on the mind, it can be tempting to look for products made of teak, walnut, mahogany and other over-harvested wood types.A more environmentally friendly approach would be to look for used furniture (such as from garage sales or antique shops) andtake advantage ofreclaimed wood in your woodworking projects (such as wood from demolished barns, wine barrels or shipping crates).

5. Chocolate and other cocoa products.

It’s a sad fact that cocoa farming has led to the vastdeforestation of forested areas in West Africa. On the bright side, 12 of the world’s largest cocoa manufacturers including Mars, Nestle and Ferrero have recently all agreed to come up with a plan by this November to stop cocoa farmers from having to cutdown so many trees. In the meantime, there are lots of places both online and offline that you can find ethically-sourced chocolate and cocoa products, which use cocoa that comes from outside West Africa and is almost always ethically grown.

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Photo Credit: Unsplash

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Products Made From Trees to Stop Buying Now

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Dot Earth Blog: Dynamic Planet: Under the Volcano in Papua New Guinea

Three views of a violent volcanic eruption in Papua New Guinea. Read original article –  Dot Earth Blog: Dynamic Planet: Under the Volcano in Papua New Guinea ; ; ;

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Dot Earth Blog: Dynamic Planet: Under the Volcano in Papua New Guinea

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Papua New Guinea Volcano Erupts, Locals Evacuate

Several communities were evacuated and some international flights were diverted Friday after a volcanic eruption on Papua New Guinea. From:  Papua New Guinea Volcano Erupts, Locals Evacuate ; ; ;

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Papua New Guinea Volcano Erupts, Locals Evacuate

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We’re on the verge of a scary undersea gold rush

We’re on the verge of a scary undersea gold rush

Two of the most popular shows on cable television right now are about digging for gold. Exciting! Gold! One of these shows, the Discovery Channel’s Bering Sea Gold, focuses on the human difficulties and dangers of digging for gold under the sea floor off the coast of Alaska.

This pursuit of material mineral riches seems like it might be a bad idea for these individuals, especially that dude with the bloody hand. But when the gold is even deeper under the sea, digging it up could be an even worse idea. And at today’s inflated gold prices, digging up the ocean will be as lucrative as it could be destructive.

National Geographic’s feature story on deep-sea mineral mining sets up a scary proposition for the Solwara 1 site in Papua New Guinea especially, where one company hopes to blaze a path into the deep with new mining technologies that could allow for the scooping up of billions if not trillions of dollars worth of deep-sea minerals.

[A] fledgling deep-sea mining industry faces a host of challenges before it can claim the precious minerals, from the need for new mining technology and serious capital to the concerns of conservationists, fishers, and coastal residents.

The roadblocks are coming into view in the coastal waters of Papua New Guinea, where the seafloor contains copper, zinc, and gold deposits worth hundreds of millions of dollars and where one company, Nautilus Minerals, hopes to launch the world’s first deep-sea mining operation …

Samantha Smith, Nautilus’s vice president for corporate social responsibility, says that ocean floor mining is safer, cleaner, and more environmentally friendly than its terrestrial counterpart.

“There are no mountains that need to be removed to get to the ore body,” she says. “There’s a potential to have a lot less waste … No people need to be displaced. Shouldn’t we as a society consider such an option?”

But mining a mile below the sea’s surface, where pressure is 160 times greater than on land and where temperatures swing from below freezing to hundreds of degrees above boiling, is trickier and more expensive than mining on terra firma.

It’s trickier in part because the same undersea hydrothermal vent spots that are so full of gold and other fancy mineral deposits are also full of awesome sea creatures like seven-foot-long tubeworms and giant snails.

Conservationists also say they want to know more about the vent ecosystems and how they will be mined.

“The whole world is new to the concept of deep-sea mining,” says Helen Rosenbaum, coordinator of the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, a small activist group in Australia that campaigns against mining the Solwara 1 site.

“This is going to be the world’s first exploitation of these kinds of deep resources. The impacts are not known, and we need to apply precautionary principles,” she says. “If we knew what the impacts were going to be, we could engage in a broad-based debate.” …

A report released in November 2012 by the Deep Sea Mining Campaign ties exploratory pre-mining activities and equipment testing by Nautilus to “cloudy water, dead tuna, and a lack of response of sharks to the age-old tradition of shark calling.”

Shark calling is a religious ritual in which Papua New Guineans lure sharks from the deep and catch them by hand.

In the past 10 years, a dozen exploratory permits have been issued to governments around the world for drilling into international waters. Any over/under bets on when this all goes horribly wrong?

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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We’re on the verge of a scary undersea gold rush

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