Mother Jones
In the heart of Washington state's logging country, where it's a treasured pastime to curse the endangered spotted owl, you'll find one of the greenest paper mills around. Tucked along the rainy coastline, Grays Harbor Paper produces some of the country's only 100 percent recycled paper in a plant powered entirely by biomass fuel derived from logging waste.
It wasn't always like this. The mill, formerly owned by itt Rayonier and International Paper, shut down in 1992, putting more than 600 people from nearby Hoquiam and Aberdeen out of work. "Families were breaking up and moving out," says Bill Quigg, a Hoquiam native who bought the mill in 1993. "There were suicides. It was really a hard time." Today, Grays Harbor Paper employs more than 200 people and Hoquiam is home to one of the nation's largest biodiesel plants.
Like other areas that have been shut out of the postindustrial economy, Grays Harbor turned to renewable energy not for feel-good reasons but financial ones. "Politically I am on the right side of Genghis Khan," says Quigg. "I'm not a lefty wacko." Nevertheless, "We make the greenest products, and we make them with the greenest fuel," he enthusiastically boasts. "Nobody else does that. We have the audacity to think we can change the market. If you buy local and smarter, you save a tremendous amount of fossil fuel."
Read the full article here: Small-Towns Are America's Green Lifeline