Digital BW, The Print

Tech advances in bleach etc won't be restricted to
wood pulp, nor to America and Europe. 

IMO trees have no future in high quality paper
production.

I've read assertions that bamboo needs less bleach
than wood in the first place, and it would obviously
need  less less mechanical treatment. Less mechanical
treatment means less fuel consumption. 

There's no American or Euro factory that will rival
the efficiency of the Japanese/SEA plant (it's not in
China). Nobody's going to build such a factory in the
West or Russia, in any imaginable future: Heavy
industry belongs to Asia now. 

Shipment of pulp hither and yon from Canada, Russia,
and the US is expensive and wasteful of fuel. Better
to grow it near big factories. 

There's no way to make trees grow pulp as rapidly as
bamboo: replanting vegetation that does slow growth
(trees) is inherently less productive than replanting
weeds (bamboo) which have incredibly rapid growth. 

Tree growth in the Northern Hemisphere is inherently
slower than tree growth near the equator. 

Canada, Russia, and the US are going to lose paper
their paper pulp industries. Most of America's plants
are reportedly very old now, and it's hard to imagine
Russia or Canada wasting money building new ones,
given  other more lucrative priorities, such as carbon
extraction.

In the 80s there was a move to build massive floating
pulp factories that would rape the Amazon. Indonesian
jungles are being ruined by furniture makers. The last
thing we need to see is "advances" in processing of
wood pulp.