U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, said maintaining strong domestic markets for timber products is essential for Southwest Washington’s economy following a recent visit to a local cardboard box manufacturing plant.
The importance of the classic cardboard box was more apparent than ever during a tour of the Northwest Paper Box manufacturing facility on Pacific Rim Boulevard in Camas on Thursday, July 9.
Northwest Paper Box Manufacturers Inc. began in Portland in 1953, remaining in the Pacific Northwest through seven decades of family-led ownership. It now faces modern struggles through unclear regulations and overseas countries competing with timber-based product manufacturing of their own.
Speaking after touring the factory floor and hearing some challenges and insight from the company’s leadership, Gluesenkamp Perez said the visit underscored the importance of supporting the entire timber supply chain, from the working forests to finished products.
“I love timber products,” she said. “You know, I think it is in all of our interests that we have good jobs here, that we have alternatives to plastics, that we have the full spectrum from logging to printing boxes, and that we have agency in those markets and the things that we rely on.”
She added that forest management and manufacturing are closely connected.
“We all see the impacts in the wildfire season of failing timber policy and making sure that there are strong markets, domestic markets,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “You know, it is sort of like a tail-to-snoot kind of approach to our timber industry.”
In Washington state, there are currently 13 major pulp and paper facilities, but in the 1980s, the number on just pulp-specific mills was over 20 in the state, according to old Washington Mill Surveys.
Asked about how issues affecting manufacturing, forestry and natural resources are interconnected, Gluesenkamp Perez said policymakers should avoid treating them as separate topics.
“I keep coming back to the necessity of pulp mills, skilled trades, a population that is supporting their domestic industries in the way that their purchasing patterns evolve, you know, that we are good stewards of our natural resources, not just because we enjoy them recreationally, but because our livelihoods depend on good stewardship,” she answered. “And so that brings a necessary circumspection to our industrial policy, our natural resource policy, our trades policy, our educational policy. It all should be mutually informative and not just siloed perspective of specialization on … not just the stream bed buffer, but the full spectrum of the strength of our communities, the unemployment levels, the agency in our workforce to command high wages. It has all got to work together and pull together.”
When considering communities that were once thriving timber towns in the Pacific Northwest — with many having shifted toward the tourism industry as the founding industry declines — Gluesenkamp Perez said public attitudes toward timber products need to change.
“I think a real shift in our attitude that cardboard and paper, timber products, are not the enemy, that the replacement for timber products is petroleum-based products,” she said.
Gluesenkamp Perez added that a part of that shift in attitude would be championing natural resources, “not just as a consumer, but as a producer, as a steward, as an agent, who is taking responsibility for the impacts of our consumption habits.”
“So I think that shift of, like, it’s not just about a zero emissions mill — it’s about what is replacing that,” she said. “We don’t want to just try to sweep things under the rug, out of sight, out of mind.”
