Advocates for forest conservation also promote the industrial use of agricultural materials as an alternative to virgin wood fibres for both paper and building materials. In most cases, the production of pulp and industrial fibres from agricultural residues is less environmentally damaging than from virgin wood materials. Agricultural fibres are much more porous than wood, and have much lower lignin levels. Both of these factors make straw easier to pulp. Most agricultural fibres are shorter than softwood fibres, and are therefore well suited for the manufacture of certain specialty papers (Hayes, 1998). Straw, a major agricultural waste product, is another material which is finding useful applications in building (Lorenz, 1995). Various kinds of sheetgoods are using straw as a primary component. And old-fashioned strawbale construction techniques are being revived as modern builders are finding it cheap, strong, durable, non-toxic and insulating (Steen, Steen, Bainbridge, & Eisenberg, 1994). [In Chapter V, I will look more closely at this use of straw in the movement for natural building.] Similar agwaste materials, like rice hulls, are being used in the production of composite outdoor lumber whose sales are booming with the phase-out of CCA-pressure-treated wood. At the same time that the applications of plant materials are multiplying, their costs of production are decreasing. The cost of several industrial enzymes dropped by almost 90 percent from l980 to 1995 (Morris, 2002)while the regulatory-imposed costs of synthetic hydrocarbon-based production continued to mount. Renewable materials tend to be more environmentally benign in all phases of their life cycle: extraction, processing, use and disposal. Most petrochemical processes, for example, employ large quantities of inorganic acids and bases, like sulphuric acid and sodium hydroxide, creating many toxic effluent streams. Globally, 40 percent of toxic pollution from