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Green goes red

"GOING green" has turned out to be a risky proposition for paper producers in Europe, who have invested heavily in a pioneering technology that is totally chlorine free, in a bid to please their environment-conscious customers. Chlorine, normally used as a bleaching agent, is also a heavy polluter, adding toxic by-products such as dioxins and chlorinated organic compounds to pulp mill effluents. Buyers' response to "green" chlorine free paper has, however, not been encouraging. They are reluctant to pay the premium prices the producers charge to recover the money they have invested in going clean.

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