The tree production may be sustainable, but if this article holds true, 100 tons of water for a single ton of paper can't be good for the environment.

Ahem.. but what can happen to water? Apparently it is not destroyed

Fresh water used for industrial processes generally makes its way to the oceans. We have essentially no way to deliberately replenish our ground water sources and the natural process is extremely slow.

> Fresh water used for industrial processes generally makes its way to the oceans. We have essentially no way to deliberately replenish our ground water sources and the natural process is extremely slow.

Then industrial processes shouldn't use groundwater. It doesn't sound like a good idea to site them where there isn't abundant surface water.

Paper mills might largely draw from rivers (I honestly don't know), but that doesn't fully alleviate the impact. Industrial processes pulling water impact downstream users, by reducing the amount of water (whatever percentage is not returned) and reducing the quality of the water that remains if they are dumping the used water back into the river.

But yes, if they use surface water, it considerably reduces the impact vs groundwater.

I'm not sure that is entirely correct. I live in San Jose, CA and we have groundwater recharge ponds. Throughout the city the water company has plots of land that they keep entirely covered with water. The idea is it soaks in, and then other people pump it back up.

http://www.valleywater.org/Services/Groundwater.aspx

That's interesting. I wasn't aware that there was significant recharge from human-managed/created basins. It looks like >50% of the recharge in Santa Clara county is non-natural. But it also looks like it still falls short of the demand from pumping.

[pdf] http://www.valleywater.org/Services/Clean_Reliable_Water/Whe...

I think the point is there is a specific rate at which that type of process is viable, and it is limited by available land and geography. As population grows, that becomes less doable.

Not to mention all the chemicals dumped in the air during production! I'm not sure if the stone paper will create less air pollution, but it bothers me when people think creating paper is an environmentally neutral process just because we have the first step of the process figured out.

But if you read the article, you will note that the "paper" is made from limestone and polyolefin, which is a plastic, which is also not good for the environment.

Was going to say the same thing. I recently worked on a piece that walks through the history of managed forests: http://blog.lumi.com/managed-forests