Photo: Rainforestweb.org

Photo: Rainforestweb.org

Photo: Amazon Watch

Industrial society has tended to see forests as free sources of valuable materials or as needless woods, occupying land and getting 'in the way' of development. As a result, of these pressures, every second the planet loses another two football fields of its precious rainforest cloak.

Old growth forests are cleared for 'development,' agriculture, cattle-grazing and plantations among other reasons.

Rainforests play an invaluable role in sustaining life on Earth. Extending from the colder climates of Alaska and Chile to the tropics of South America, Africa, and Asia, rainforests provide a critical habitat for many of the Earth's plant and animal species.

Every day we are losing more of our forests to the production of paper products. Paper production is one of the primary reasons our forests are being clear-cut at such a dizzying pace. And many of these products - office paper, post-it pads, paper towels, napkins, etc, - are used once and then thrown away.

The pulp and paper industry is the largest single industrial wood consumer in the US and in the world. Pulp mills in the United States consume more than 12,000 square miles of forest each year; almost half of all trees logged are turned into paper, and the percentage is increasing.

Currently, 90% of the world's paper is manufactured from wood pulp, but in the United States less than 1% of the total pulp produced is manufactured from nonwood, tree free alternatives. In the US, our per capita paper usage tips the scales at 735 pounds of paper per year.

More than half of our paper in the US comes from Southern forests, the region containing the greatest biodiversity in the continental US. Office paper also contains pulp made from old growth trees - such as majestic 1000-year-old Douglas firs from the Pacific Northwest, or Canada's Great Bear Rainforest.

Paper comprises from 40 to 50% of the trash in typical landfills.

-Treecycle.com

The Answer: Nile Fiber™

The Nile Group, Inc. was formed in 1996 to develop commercial applications for the non-wood fiber crop Nile Fiber™ as the ideal alternative and/or supplement to wood and other non-wood fiber for the production of pulp, paper products and building materials. This crop produces up to 35 tons per acre per year; almost seven times the yield of most forests.

Our Mission

The Nile Groups mission is to be the global catalyst for the use of Nile Fiber™ as an ecologically sustainable and economically viable non-wood fiber, creating value-added products for our customers, and to benefit society at large by producing an environmentally friendly alternative to uncontrolled harvesting of trees.