National Post (National Edition)
CAN WOODEN CARS SAVE THE STUDY OF FORESTRY?
U of T program potentially faces the axe
DEMAND FOR FOREST PRODUCTS IS EXPECTED TO GROW.
TORONTO • More and more people read articles such as this on a screen, curbing demand for newsprint. Our chairs are made of plastic; our houses brick, concrete and drywall. We just don’t need trees the way we used to, which has researchers and the industry scrambling to find new applications.
One novel idea is to build cars out of wood. On the surface, it sounds ridiculous. After all, wood is highly combustible and car engines quickly run hot. Still, that hasn’t stopped the University of Toronto from trying.
Inside the university’s “high-performance bio-carbon composites pilot facility” is a machine that looks like something from a Dr. Seuss book, but it can make car parts from wood. Mohini Sain, U of T’s dean of forestry, insists the parts are perfectly safe even though the aroma inside the facility smells a lot like a wood stove.
A few weeks ago, Ford of Canada summoned Sain to Windsor, Ont. There, in the presence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ford announced a $500-million research and development program in Canada that includes “lightweighting” — that is, car parts made with wood.
But this recognition of forestry’s importance may have come too late for some.
A report last year from McGill University, University of California-Berkeley, and Sweden’s University of Agricultural Sciences detailed the slow suffocation of U of T’s forestry faculty, a fate the researchers call misguided.
“The attention paid to sustainable forest management has never been higher, and in the emerging bioeconomy the demand for forest products and services is expected to grow,” the researchers wrote. “In a country that owns 10 per cent of the world’s forest, and 27 per cent of the world’s boreal forest, the importance of this resource can hardly be overestimated.”
Despite declines in demand for paper and other wood products, the forest sector remains important, contributing $20 billion to Canada’s GDP in 2013, and the country is the world’s biggest exporter of forest products.
Even so, U of T sees less use for the study of forestry. Last month Cheryl Regehr, U of T’s provost (in charge of academic programs), alerted forestry faculty to a “potential academic restructuring” — in other words, the possible abolition of the program.
Leaders in Canada’s forest industry are concerned. They fear the move may signal that Canada, a forestry superpower, is ceding leadership to Europe and Asia.
U of T is unmoved: president Meric Gertler recently turned down a meeting with the forestry faculty’s advisory committee, angering a prominent industry figure. “Your response to our request to meet with the advisory committee is to say the least, disappointing!” Frank Dottori, a member of the Order of Canada and famed as the once-long-time CEO of forest giant Tembec Inc., wrote in an email to Gertler in mid-April.
Althea Blackburn-Evans, a spokesperson for the university, said, “The president looks to the provost to handle academic matters like this.”
The study of forests in Canada has a rich history. Bernhard Eduard Fernow, North America’s first professional forester, founded the country’s first forestry faculty in Toronto in 1907. In 1989, Adam Zimmerman, who ran Noranda Inc., then Canada’s largest forest products company, raised $32 million (and pried another $32 million from Ontario) for a new faculty headquarters in the heart of U of T.
“We’re a forest country,” said Eric Davies, a PhD candidate in forestry. “The leaf is on our flag. We were pretty popular when we were helping (industry) cut forests. We invented forest inventory. But today, forestry has gone all mechanized. They have satellites. They don’t need us any more.”
Davies believes the university wants to close forestry to free up prime real estate on campus. “Everyone wants our space,” he said. “It’s right by the Faculty Club. It’s like Boardwalk and Park Place.”
Sain insists that inventions in the forestry faculty have the potential to transform industries. “Automotive is a big pillar for us,” he said.
On the floor of the facility sits a 100-kilogram bale of New Brunswick pulp about the size of a coffee table. Shiang Law, a technician, peels a layer off the pulp and feeds it into a hopper. The “pelletizer” turns the pulp into what resemble Rice Krispies. He then pours the pulp pellets into an extruder, mixing in polypropylene (plastic) pellets, dyes, carbon fibre and other more secret ingredients. “We put some spices in there,” Sain said with a smile.
A hot black mixture that looks like tar oozes from the twin-screw extruder. The substance goes through a second mixer and then rollers flatten the compound into a sheet.
Sain shows off finished car parts moulded from the compound, including a cam cover, battery cover, oil pan and engine cover. These parts, he said, are lighter and stronger that those in use today, are heat resistant and made from a renewable resource.
He has other tricks up his sleeve, too. He displays a chunk of what looks like a giant Styrofoam banana. Called rigid lignin, this foam can fill a car bumper, making it “96-per-cent organic, mostly woody materials.”
He hits an elevator button. “Let me take you to your next frontier of technology,” Sain said, as the door opens on an upper floor: “Nano-technology.” He unlocks a fridge and pulls out a white plastic bucket filled with a creamy white substance, like hair gel.
“This is nano-cellulose,” he said. “You can put it in cosmetics, in yogurt. You can make one-coat nano-paints.”
In another lab, he shows off what look like sheets of plastic, but are actually made of wood. “This is lighter, flexible, portable and renewable,” he said. “And it is from Mother Nature.”
Sandy Smith, a former dean of forestry at the school, applauds Sain’s work. Smith said society must view foresters not as tree huggers, but as innovators. “Mohini is a businessman, and forestry is about business,” she said. “If people don’t get livelihoods from the forest, we lose the forest.”
Smith fears that the “Harvard MBAs running the university these days” will scrap her old faculty for shortterm gain, and miss out on its long-term potential.
Sain’s five-year term as dean ends in June. On the plus side, after forestry professors made a lot of noise, U of T recently agreed to appoint a new dean of forestry.
Regehr, the provost, insists that the school values its foresters. “We do want these programs to flourish,” she said. “Student demand for forestry has declined. The university has to look at the demand we have from students and ensure we have faculty in areas where we have student demand. We are absolutely committed to forest sciences.”
But numbers provided by the Faculty of Forestry suggest both undergraduate and graduate enrolment is on the rise.
Canada’s eight forestry faculties — from UNB in the east to UBC in the west — have all had to adapt as forestry mechanizes, the industry consolidates and demand for forest products ebbs and flows. “All the schools have developed strategies to raise their profiles,” Smith said. “Some are showing more environmental links. UBC has courted Asian students.”
Peter Schleifenbaum, who owns one of the biggest private forests in Ontario, the 40,000-hectare Haliburton Forest, fears for the future of the industry. Every year, U of T forestry masters students begin their program with a week in his forest. Schleifenbaum sits on the faculty advisory committee.
“Faculty of Forestry graduates occupy positions all across the emerging carbon economy, from forests to carbon traders, policy-makers, industry and NGOs,” he said in an email. “We need forestry and especially forestry education and research now more than ever. This is not the time for U of T administration to play games.”