Stuff Essay, Research Paper

The purpose of this assignment is to state how Jackson Paper and their affiliates are. Jackson paper is a by-product of the Armour Tannery in Sylva, North Carolina founded by C.J. Harris in 1901.

Armour was located in the flats along Scotts Creek in East Sylva. Armour boiled chestnut wood chips to produce tannin extract. They used the tannin extract to tan packer hides. The hides were used to make industrial machine belts and shoe sole leather. In the early 1900s the Armour leather company expanded the extract operation to supply tannin extract for its 14 tanneries across the nation. From 45 thousand cords of chestnut wood a year the extract plant produced about 62 thousand barrels of tannin extract. Even though they dried and burned the wood chips there was still and over flow of wood chips. Tanning operations were reported to be consistent with those known as vegetable tanning. In the 1920s the introduction of cheaper South American leather on the American market required tanneries to make cheaper leather in order to be able to compete with the South American leather. Also in the 1920s George H. Mead, a man who made cardboard from straw, discovered a way to make cardboard out of boiled wood chips. Seeing an opportunity to make leather cheaper than before, Lyndon McKee the manager of Armour s plant in Sylva, arranged for George Mead to buy Armour s extract operation. They then started the Sylva Paperboard Company in 1928. The company would later change its name to Mead. They produced tannin extract and paper for cardboard boxes.

Mead closed its extracting operations in 1953 due mainly to a chestnut blight. By 1955, even though they closed down the extract operation, Mead was the largest manufacturer in the country. The company owned and operated its own 40,000-acre forest, bought over $1 million in timber a year, employed over 300 workers, and had an annual payroll of $1.3 million.

The Mead Corporation began papermaking using the kraft pulping process. The paper mill used the chestnut and hemlock wood left over from a vegetable tanning facility that began operations at the site in 1901. The kraft pulping process utilized by Mead resulted in environmental pollution first documented in 1937. Mead experienced financial tribulations because of the environmental dilemma. The process used to manufacture the cardboard produced a dark residual chemical called black liquor, an acidic, glucose-rich liquid which is washed out of the pulp. The black liquor was discharged directly into Scotts Creek and then into the Tuckasegee. George Mead took note of the harmful effects of this liquor on water quality and aquatic life, in 1937, and began treating it.

Mead constructed a pilot plant in 1950 to remove the solid waste from the liquor, but it continued give the water a dark color and bad odor. Mead eventually changed the process of pulping from a sodium base to an ammonia-based liquor so that the waste would be burned and evaporated. This process, however, was not cheap. Mead implemented the process by 1970 at a cost of $2.5 million. Although the process cut the water pollution down by 75 percent, the ammonia process increased air pollution. The community didn t like the smell of the ammonia and sulfur. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) did not like the pollution and ordered Mead to reduce it. Finding a cheaper way out of their problem Mead constructed a new plant in Alabama and closed down the one in Sylva. The Dixie Container Corporation bought Mead s plant and reopened it as Jackson Paper Manufacturing Company. Jackson paper recycled old cardboard to make paper. Now the county s forests were no longer needed to manufacture paper.

There was believed to be a lot of solid waste left over from the Mead corporations and the other corporations before Jackson Paper. The truth is most of the waste were disposed of properly. The tanneries usually co-depend with the paper mills and the tanneries used the wood extracts and the paper mills used the bulk wood for pulp. They didn t waste any of their resources. Waste from vegetable tanning operations at the site would be expected to include: lime and animal fat from initial hide preparation processes; acids or ammonium form the de-liming process; maybe fungicides from where they tried to keep the hides from collecting mold; and some waste hides. The waste hides were disposed of as solid waste. The hairs, removed from the hides, were usually sold to furniture manufactures for use as padding, or carpet manufacturers. Waste chemicals such as lime, acids and ammonia, were likely diluted and discharged to a nearby surface stream. The waste vegetable/wood pulp from the generation of tannins and would have been used in the pulp and paper industry. Solid wastes generated at the Sylva site may have included sludge generated from the treatment of the black liquor infested wastewater.