Saving the Vanishing Forests of the World

MacDougall’s series on forests was tremendous. He examined the forests’ interlinking tapestry with clarity and the detail necessary for the reader to understand many aspects of a complex problem. He used a lot of words, and thus a lot of newsprint. I believe there was a statistic buried somewhere in there about paper consumption. Wasn’t it that 35-40% of all wood production was used to make paper products?

Whatever the percentage, it seems irresponsible of The Times, a major consumer of paper, to not have an ongoing, aggressive paper recycling program to back up its concern about the vanishing forests. Of course there are some newspaper recycling programs administered by Southland cities, and of course some newspapers are recycled by free enterprise small-time paper collectors, but aren’t the enormous bulk of yesterday’s Los Angeles Times simply tossed in with the garbage?

DAVID JACKSON

Santa Monica