I find a certain degree of irony in the fight to preserve the Appleton Coated paper mill in Combined Locks. Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson–a perpetual Democratic candidate for several other elected positions–is actively trying to find a buyer to continue to operate a plant that can’t make any money because of a movement that Nelson himself fully supports.
I’m talking about the “paperless revolution”. Everyone from utilities to private businesses to government entities are crowing about how they are going away from printing up documents and “wasting paper” by putting all of their forms, reports and even register receipts into digital formats to be accessed by computer, tablet or smart phone. By “going paperless” we are “helping the environment” by not having to cut down so many trees to make paper. We aren’t spewing carbon emissions into the air from paper converting mills. And we are using less “toxic” ink to print color pages.
That all sounds great–unless you work for Appleton Coated, or any of the hundreds of other specialty papermakers around the country. Coated mainly produces glossy sheets for magazines and textbooks. When publishers touting themselves as “good planetary stewards” encourage their readers to move to digital subscriptions (or just post their content with links anyone can access on social media) what happens to the printing market? And with more schools using taxpayer dollars to purchase tablets or laptops for students to access their learning materials, where is the built-in market for textbooks?
“Going green” has real economic impacts–to which workers at Appleton Coated can now attest.
While paper plants close, no one is opening up “megabit” or “pixel” plants to replace them. If there was some way to “digitally” wipe your butt that would replace the need for toilet paper, I’d bet that Tom Nelson would be installing that system in all Outagamie County buildings to make them more “eco-friendly”. And then a few years later, (provided some TV cameras are there to record it) he would claim to be “working hard to save” all the tissue mill jobs that he and his “green” supporters made obsolete.
